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CIGR Canada Conference on Power Systems Vancouver, October 17- 19, 2010

Power Quality Enhancements for IEC 61850

D. CUMMING, Schneider Electric1(CAN)

SUMMARY
Today design, deployment, and operation of modern substations are changing significantly. IEC 61850 (61850)[1] leads the way, as a notably improved global standard. 61850 is the result of years of research by leading utility industry experts seeking to provide a universal standard addressing all significant aspects of modern substation communication. This paper supports 61850 as a worthy vehicle for providing power quality solutions to the industry while examining concepts for enhancing power quality aspects for improved functionality.

KEYWORDS
IEC 61850, logical nodes, power quality.

daniel.cumming@ca.schneider-electric.com

1. INTRODUCTION
ORIGINALLY centered around automation and protection aspects inside high voltage substations, 61850s guiding principal of using modeling and common services to reduce technical functions into logical pieces (logical nodes) has facilitated 61850 branching out into many electrical infrastructure areas. The resulting ability to achieve relatively quick maturity of new functions lends itself well to a vision of the complete modern substation of the future.

2. GLOBAL EMERGENCE OF IEC 61850

The integrated approach to system design and communications has led to IEC 61850 emerging as the dominant global utility substation protocol standard. With more than five years of market awareness and two published editions to date, 61850 will continue to be heavily prescribed due to the excellent market support from major vendors. Further evidence of this emergence can be seen in the myriad of areas which 61850 has reached. Working groups have and are developing extensions of the standard into substation-substation communications, wind-farms, hydro plants, and device security to name just a few. 61850 seeks a unified approach, presenting a suite of protocols that are designed to multitask efficiently and provide support for modern engineering workflows in the design, deployment, and operation of electrical utility systems. Fig. 1 shows the traditional substation and the many protocol choices that can exist.

Fig. 1 Traditional substation protocols.

Because Ethernet is the backbone for the 61850 architecture, easily deployable technology exists to simplify the substation of tomorrow. Fig. 2 shows the same system as Fig. 1 with a new communications architecture utilizing 61850 and Ethernet.

Fig. 2 Ethernet-based 61850 substation.

61850 also provides other unique technical benefits superior to traditional communication protocols. These include: File based setup to allow archiving, maintenance, and the potential for high level engineering tools to enable repeatability and ease of deployment. Unified modeling of functions and a common dictionary of terms to provide vendor neutrality and support a strong basis for extension and expansion of the standard in the future. Self-description services for automated discovery and potential for system validation at commissioning. The sheer market momentum, coupled with the functional strength of its integrated design and technical potential, mark 61850 as the global emerging dominant standard within electrical utility infrastructure.

3. ENHANCING POWER QUALITY IN 61850

Aspects of power quality analysis and reporting have been included from the beginning in 61850 though they are not able to provide a full solution for power quality users. But, because it leverages high bandwidth communications (Ethernet) and an integrated approach to protocol suites and services, 61850 can be adapted to provide full support for power quality analysis and reporting applications. 3.1 Existing 61850 Power Quality Support In the current edition of 61850 (Edition 2 at the time of writing), there already exist elements of power quality analysis and compliance reporting. These include: Fault record support - Adoption of the COMTRADE [3] fault record standard for providing file-based waveforms and the RDRE (Disturbance Recorder Function) logical node for notification of fault records for 61850 clients. File based protocol service - FTP service to provide downloading of COMTRADE fault record data. Modeling for some power quality functions - Logical node support for providing harmonics (MHAI), flicker (MFLK) and imbalanced power calculations (MADV) , frequency variation

(QFVR), current transient (QITR), current unbalance variation (QUIB), voltage transient (QVTR), voltage unbalance variation (QVUB) and voltage variation (QVVR).
Log model service This service can be used to log values from logical nodes in an Intelligent Electronic Device (IED). In the context of power quality, this service could store the power quality statistical values over a power quality survey period. Time synchronization SNTP is called out by the standard and provides potential for millisecond accuracy. Time synchronization is important in order to provide power quality event correlation between devices.

These elements are important pieces of power quality but they cannot provide the whole picture. In other words, the current power quality support level in 61850 is lacking key features for widely used applications, such as contract based compliance reporting. 3.2 Adoption of IEC 61000-4-30 and EN 50160 [4] as a Basis for Enhancing the Power Quality Aspects of 61850 In order to bolster the power quality capabilities of 61850 the approach should be built on the existing principles of the standard: vendor-neutrality, application relevance, and global market presence. To this end, the obvious choices for power quality applications are the IEC 61000-4-30 (4-30) [2] and EN 50160 standards. These two standards are well established globally and go hand-in-hand to provide contractual-based power quality measurement support (4-30) and compliance reporting (EN50160).

3.3 Proposed Power Quality Enhancements to IEC 61850 Assuming that the adoption of 4-30 and EN 50160 form the basis for the power quality improvements in future versions of the IEC 61850 standard, the following additions/changes should be considered: Modeling for additional power quality functions - Logical Node support should be expanded to include all the required measurements of the 4-30 standard (Class A) and the key data and counters of EN 50160 reporting. Log model service The log model service may require some extension in order to provide meaningful data for power quality applications. Time synchronization Time synchronization should be updated to the current standard. In some cases sub-millisecond time synchronization between devices would be useful for accurate power quality event correlation between devices. At this time IEEE 1588 [6] is being considered for future editions of the standard which would provide this functionality. File-based power quality events IED power quality events could potentially be developed in the logical node additions for client reporting. However, it may be useful to provide some kind of file-based power quality method through 61850. This method would provide a record sequence of time-stamped power quality events to trace system events between devices (like a cascading protection sequence [based on breaker status] or a waveform based algorithm). File-based support for compliance reporting FTP (public) and File Transfer (61850 specific) services should be modified to provide downloading of power quality compliance reports. In addition, File-based support for compliance reporting could be developed in conjunction with file-based power quality events or as a similar but separate construct. This would provide end user compliance reporting through file-based downloads from the device.

4. CONCLUSION
IEC 61850 is a powerful standard. Built on sound engineering principles and technology, it can be leveraged to provide valuable information in power quality analysis, compliance reporting applications, and other similar functions. Using widely adopted power quality standards for measurement and reporting, like IEC 61000-4-30 and EN 50160, could provide logical key support. By enhancing the logical node support, time synchronization accuracy, and event sequencing with additional quality reporting for end users, IEC 61850 can be extended to support many advanced power quality applications.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Standards: [1] IEC 61850: Communication Networks and Systems in Substations, 2008. [2] IEC 61000-4-30: Testing and measurement techniques - Power quality measurement methods, 2008. [3] IEEE Standard Common Format for Transient Data Exchange (COMTRADE) for Power Systems, IEEE standard C37.111, 1999. [4] EN 50160: Voltage Characteristics in Public Distribution Systems, 1999. [5] RFC1361: Simple Network Time Protocol (SNTP), 1992. [6] IEEE 1588: Standard for a Precision Clock Synchronization Protocol for Networked Measurement and Control Systems, 2008.

BIOGRAPHY Daniel Cumming1 is a professional engineer with over 10 years of industry experience. He received
his Bachelor of Electrical Engineering from the University of Victoria in 1997 and worked as an electronics design engineer for several companies including Power Measurement (now Schneider Electric). Since 2005, he has worked at Schneider Electric as an offer manager for Utility Metering.