Powerful analysis of digital substations
Due to the increasing implementation of the IEC 61850 standard for communication between Intelligent Electronic Devices (IED) in operational substations, the world of protection engineering is evolving. Ali Abdulla, application specialist at OMICRON elaborates on this.
9th September 2018 by Networks
As the power industry transitions towards a smarter grid, significant efforts have been made in digital communications to improve efficiency and performance in all tasks to reduce outages in case of faults. Nowadays, testing the increasingly complex automation and communications of intelligent protection devices consumes more time than testing the protection functionality.
The replacement of part, or all, of the hardwired interfaces with communication links requires the development and implementation of new methods and tools so that engineers can maintain the same level of security during the testing process, while also taking advantage of all the benefits that IEC 61850 offers. As hard-wired schemes are converted to GOOSE and SV based schemes, test personnel will need new skills, testing methods and documentation tools to enable them to troubleshoot.
The testing of protection devices and schemes in digital substations does indeed bring challenges, but it also presents new opportunities to conduct tests with greater safety and efficiency while contributing to the reliability of the grid.
OMICRON has been involved in developments for testing IEC 61850 communication for over 15 years and is the market leader in providing advanced testing tools and training courses to serve protection engineers different needs:
- l Client/server communication
- l Sampled values
- l GOOSE
- l Binary I/O extension for power utility automation.
For further information visit www.omicronenergy.com or email
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