Ingenieria Electrica Aplicada

Fifteenth National Power Systems Conference (NPSC), IIT Bombay, December 2008

Implementation Issues with IEC 61850 Based Substation Automation Systems
Tarlochan S. Sidhu, Fellow, IEEE, Mitalkumar G. Kanabar, Student Member, IEEE, and Palak P. Parikh, Student Member, IEEE
Abstract—International Electro-technical Commission (IEC) has developed a new global standard, IEC 61850 for communicationsystems in power substations. This standard provides interoperability among the all communication devices within the substation. This paper presents basic features of communication systems proposed by IEC 61850, such as functional hierarchy, OSI-7 layer based communication, and process bus. To obtain complete advantages of the standard, it is important to consider all the major issues related topractical implementation. This paper discusses challenges for implementing new communication architecture, such as process bus and station bus. Further, the overall substation functional issues, and planning issues are also explained. Some possible solutions to several major implementation issues are suggested.
I.

implementation of IEC 61850 based SAS. The issues related to communicationsystem at process level and station level, are analyzed in detail. Further, SAS functional issues and planning related issues are also discussed. This paper also proposes several possible solutions to address some of the implementation issues. The organization of this paper is as follows. In Section-II, the communication systems proposed in IEC 61850 standard are described. The implementationchallenges and solutions related to communication architecture, substation functionality, and planning are presented in Section-III. Section-IV concludes the paper. II.SUBSTATION AUTOMATION USING IEC 61850 A. Features of Communication Systems of IEC 61850 1) Function Hierarchy and Interfaces of IEC 61850: The three levels in the functional hierarchy are shown in Fig.1:

INTRODUCTION

he success of aSubstation Automation System (SAS) relies on the use of an effective communication system to link the various protection, control, and monitoring elements within a substation. The major challenge faced by substation automation design engineer is to provide interoperability among the protection, control, and monitoring devices from the various manufacturers. Up until recently, all the manufacturersare/were using their own proprietary communication protocols. Huge investment is needed to develop costly and complicated protocol converters [1]. To address these SAS issues, IEC working group TC57 has published IEC 61850 named as “Communication Networks and Systems in Substation” in 2003 [2]. IEC 61850 standard covers not only how to communicate but also what to communicate. IEC 61850capabilities clearly exceed what former IEC 60870-5-103, DNP3, and most proprietary protocols had to offer [3]. IEC 61850 provides the interoperability by defining the communication protocol, data format and the configuration language. However, there are several unresolved issues which need to be addressed before the implementation of IEC 61850 based SAS. T. S. Sidhu et al. have evaluated performance of IEC61850 based substation communication system, and highlighted issues with several communication topologies, in reference [4]. References [5-10] discuss specific issues related to communication network of SAS. In reference [11], B. Kasztenny et al. have investigated functionality issues related to IEC 61850 based SAS. This paper discusses the challenges for the practical
The authors are with theDepartment of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the University of Western Ontario, London, ON, N6A 5B9, Canada, (e-mail: sidhu@eng.uwo.ca; mkanaba@uwo.ca; pparikh5@uwo.ca).

T

Fig. 1 Interface model of a substation automation system.

Process level: This level includes switchyard equipments such as CTs / PTs, Remote I/O, actuators, etc. Bay level: Bay level includes protection and...