Design, construction and validation of a next-generation protection and control system based on IEC 61850 standards

An IEC 61850-based standardised substation protection and control (P&C) system demonstrates significant construction and operational advantages over conventional P&C normally used in transmission substations. Utilities face big challenges in updating their transmission network, such as lifecycle coordination between primary plant and secondary systems and the complex wiring associated with connecting them together. These problems can be solved by strictly adhering to the IEC 61850 standards and realizing options such as interoperability and “plug & play” swapping of devices. This project set up a flexible protection and control proof of concept laboratory that represents the protection schemes used in a UK 400-kV substation to assess the performance of IEC 61850 on the P&C scheme before being applied to a real transmission substation. This presentation discusses the compatibility between conventional hardwired relay and IEC 61850 intelligent electronic devices (IEDs), the communication between the merging unit and the IEDs through fibre-optic communications, the relay test set and testing software. Utilities seek to gain confidence in the system so that, when it is rolled out to a real substation, it will perform as expected, and the engineers involved in the roll-out are confident in the use of IEC 61850 technology.