ABB SR IEC 61850 72dpi

I E C 6 1 8 5 0 : T h e n e w a p p ro a c h 7
P roducts for the standard 16

Ve ri fi c a ti o n a n d v a li d a ti o n 2 3
C ase studies of IEC 61850 38
S pecial R eport
IEC 61850
review
A B B
The corporate
technical journal
2 A B B review special report
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p ly fro m c o n v e n ti o n a l a n d re n e w -
a b le s o u rc e s v i a c o m p le x n e tw o rk s
re q u i re s s e a m le s s c o n tro l th a t i s o n ly
p o s s i b le w i th th e h e lp o f a s ta n d a rd
p ro v i d i n g a h i g h -le v e l a n d c o m p re -
h e n s i v e d e s c ri p ti o n o f th e i n fo rm a ti o n
e x c h a n g e d . A B B s e rv e s th e p o w e r
s y s te m w i th s u b s ta ti o n s a s w e ll a s
u ti li ty a u to m a ti o n s o lu ti o n s . L e a rn
m o re a b o u t I E C 6 1 8 5 0 a n d A B B s
c o m m i tm e n t fro m th e o n s e t b o th to
d e v e lo p i n g th e s ta n d a rd a n d i m p le -
m e n ti n g i t i n p ro d u c ts a n d s y s te m
s o lu ti o n s .
C ontents
7

1 3
1 6
2 3
2 9
3 3
3 8
4 2
4 7
5 3
5 7
6 2
T h e c o n c e p t o f I E C 6 1 8 5 0
A new approach for com m unication in substation
autom ation and beyond

C o m m o n d e n o m i n a to r
C om m on com ponents have helped A B B adopt the
IEC 61850 substation com m unication standard in
record tim e
P u s h i n g th e li m i ts
A B B product developm ent based on the IEC 61850
standard
Ve ri fi e d a n d v a li d a te d
A B B has its ow n system verification and validation
center
A te s ti n g e n v i ro n m e n t
A B B s com prehensive suite of softw are testing and
com m issioning tools for substation autom ation system s
N e x t g e n e ra ti o n s u b s ta ti o n s
Im pact of the process bus
I E C 6 1 8 5 0 a t w o rk
Five case studies
Wh e n tw o b e c o m e o n e
IEC 61850 in com bination w ith A B B s aw ard-w inning
Extended A utom ation S ystem 800xA is opening doors to
new and cost-effective solutions
I E C 6 1 8 5 0 E d i ti o n 2
From substation autom ation to pow er utility autom ation
R e li a b le n e tw o rk i n g
Im pact of m odern com m unication technology on system
reliability
S e a m le s s re d u n d a n c y
B um pless Ethernet redundancy for substations w ith
IEC 61850
I E C 6 1 8 5 0 a s u c c e s s a ro u n d th e w o rld
S ubstation autom ation system s pave the w ay to a
sm arter grid
The w ay forw ard
P roject
experience
Enabling the
sm art grid
S m arter
substations
Innovation and
developm ent
B ackground
3 C o n te n ts
A B B review special report 4
C la e s R y to ft
H ead of Technology
P ow er S ystem s division
P e te r L e u p p
H ead of P ow er S ystem s division
M em ber A B B G roup
Executive C om m ittee
control the devices, and how conform ity to
the standard should be tested.
Follow ing its introduction, the im plem entation
of IEC 61850 has advanced at a rem arkable
pace. P erhaps never before has an industrial
standard been accepted w ith such speed.
W ithin tw o years of its release, a m ajority of
the m arket w as dem anding IEC 61850 as the
preferred com m unication protocol.
It is increasingly being used for the integration
of electrical equipm ent into distributed control
system s in process industries. The fact that
new application areas, such as hydro and
w ind pow er are being added is yet another
indication of its success.
The bottom line is about how technology can
low er costs, im prove reliability and enhance
efficiency. IEC 61850 has a proven track
record of deliverable benefits to both sm all
and large utilities. C om m unication infrastruc-
ture costs m oney to install, configure and
m aintain. B ut the savings that IEC 61850
delivers by w ay of substation design, installa-
tion, com m issioning, and operation com bined
w ith new capabilities that are not practical or
cost effective using legacy approaches,
m akes it a w orthw hile investm ent.
This special edition of ABB Review looks at
this truly global and unifying standard from
different angles and relates m any of our
experiences based on the vast installed base
w e have built during the years. W e shall also
attem pt to take a peek into som e possible
future developm ents in this area.
W e hope you enjoy reading this dedicated
special issue.
P eter Leupp C laes R ytoft
D e a r R e a d e r,
S ubstations are key com ponents of the pow er
grid, facilitating the efficient transm ission and
distribution of electricity. They play a vital role
in term s of m onitoring and controlling pow er
flow s and provide the interconnection be-
tw een generating facilities, transm ission and
distribution netw orks and end consum ers.
S ubstation autom ation system s m ake their
control and m onitoring possible in real tim e
and help m axim ize availability, efficiency,
reliability, safety and data integration.
For decades, the pow er sector w as geo-
graphically split betw een tw o m ajor standards
IEC (International Electrotechnical C om m is-
sion) and A N S I (A m erican N ational S tandards
Institute). This often proved a deterrent to
the developm ent of a global technology
offering.
IEC 61850 broke this deadlock. S ince its
publication in 2004, it has been em braced by
both the IEC and A N S I com m unities. The new
standard w as designed to:
P rovide a single protocol for a com plete
substation
Im plem ent a com m on form at to describe
the substation and facilitate object m odel-
ing of data required in the substation
D efine the basic services required to
transfer data using different com m unication
protocols
A llow for interoperability betw een products
from different vendors
The standardization w ork com m enced in the
m id 1990s and continued for alm ost a
decade, involving m ore than 60 experts from
utility and technology providers across the
globe. A B B w as very m uch a part of this
process and som e of the contributors are
represented in this report.
IEC 61850 provides a standardized fram e-
w ork for substation integration that specifies
the com m unications requirem ents, the
functional characteristics, the structure of
data in devices, the nam ing conventions for
the data, how applications interact and
Editorial
IEC 61850 A unifying global
com m unication standard
5 E d i to ri a l
7 T h e c o n c e p t o f I E C 6 1 8 5 0
The concept
of IEC 61850
K L A U S -P E T E R B R A N D , WO L F G A N G
WI M M E R T h e a b ility to c o p e w ith
th e n a tu ra l m ig ra tio n o f te c h n o lo g y
c o m b in e d w ith th e n e e d fo r in te ro p e r-
a b ility a re ju s t s o m e o f th e re a s o n s th e
I E C 6 1 8 5 0 , a n in te rn a tio n a l s ta n d a rd
th a t d e n e s c o m m u n ic a tio n in a n d
b e tw e e n e le c tric a l s u b s ta tio n a u to -
m a tio n s y s te m s w a s d e v e lo p e d . U s in g
it s o b je c t-o rie n te d h ie ra rc h ic a l d a ta
m o d e l a p p ro a c h w ith h ig h -le v e l
s ta n d a rd ize d s e m a n tic s , I E C 6 1 8 5 0
e n a b le s th e a b s tra c t d e n itio n o f d a ta
ite m s a n d s e rv ic e s to n o t o n ly s p e c ify
w h a t d a ta o r in fo rm a tio n n e e d s to
b e e x c h a n g e d b u t a ls o th e m e c h a n ic s
o f h o w it is to b e e x c h a n g e d u s in g
m a in s tre a m c o m m u n ic a tio n a n d
n e tw o rk in g ( m a in ly E th e rn e t) te c h n o lo -
g ie s . I n a d d itio n , th e c o s t b e n e ts o f
im p le m e n tin g I E C 6 1 8 5 0 c a n a lre a d y
b e s e e n in th e s y s te m d e s ig n p h a s e
a n d e x p e rie n c e d rig h t th ro u g h to th e
c o m m is s io n in g a n d o p e ra tin g p h a s e s .
A ll o f th e s e fa c to rs h e lp to e x p la in th e
e a g e rn e s s a n d s p e e d w ith w h ic h th e
rs t e d itio n o f th e s ta n d a rd h a s b e e n
a c c e p te d a ro u n d th e g lo b e .
A new approach for com m unication in
substation autom ation and beyond
S
ubstation autom ation (S A ) is
com m only used to control,
protect and m onitor a substa-
tion [1]. H ow ever, over the
years advances in electronics, inform a-
tion and com m unications technology
have brought about sw eeping changes
in the w ay substations are operated. The
advent of softw are-based substation au-
tom ation system s (hereafter referred to
as S A system s) connected by serial links
rather then rigid parallel copper w iring
gradually becam e
the norm rather
than the exception.
Though successful
and w idely accept-
ed, these system s
w ere based on ei-
ther the m anufac-
turersow n propri-
etary com m u nica-
tion solutions or the
de ned use of com -
m unication stan-
dards from other application dom ains,
such as D N P 3 or IEC 60870-5-104.
These solutions m ade interoperability
betw een devices from different suppliers,
and som etim es even betw een different
versions of devices from the sam e sup-
plier, an engineering nightm are w hich
could only be m itigated by expensive
protocol conversion or re-engineering.
The connection of the S A system w ith
the sw itchgear and instrum ent trans-
form ers w as still left to analog standards
such as 1 A and 3 A for current trans-
form ers, and 110 V and 220 V for voltage
transform ers and contact circuits for
sw itchgear operations.
It took over 20 years before global forc-
es, such as international suppliers and
transnational utilities raised their voices
to request a solution, in the form of a
substation com m unication standard, to
overcom e the interoperability prob-
lem 1 . W hile interoperability w as a m a-
jor concern, it w asnt the only one. O nly
too aw are of the dizzying pace at w hich
technologies change, the authors of this
new standard, know n as IEC 61850, also
set about finding a w ay to create a future
-proofstandard that w ould be im m une
U sing its object-oriented hier-
archical data m odel approach
w ith high-level standardized
sem antics, IEC 61850 enables
the abstract definition of data
item s and services.
various technologies em ployed in a typi-
cal substation. For exam ple, fast-chang-
ing m ainstream com m unication technol-
ogy w ill alw ays need to serve the
slow er-changing requirem ents of protec-
tion and substation autom ation.
To facilitate the use of the standard for
users, the identification of all transm itted
data should not be based on a lim ited
num ber schem e derived from contact
term inal row s, but rather on the object-
oriented grouping of data and a nam ing
structure that uses standardized acro-
nym s understandable to any substation
engineer. In addition, configuration and
engineering tools should be used to cre-
ate system s w ith m inim um effort and
w ith a m inim um risk of failure.
T h e b a s i c a p p ro a c h o f I E C 6 1 8 5 0
To reach long-term interoperability, ie, to
cope w ith the different tim e scales of
function evolution in the dom ain substa-
tion and w ith changing com m unication
technology, the approach taken in the
IEC 61850 standard separates the do-
m ain related m odel for both data and
com m unication services from the proto-
cols, ie, the IS O /O S I seven-layer stack
used to code and decode inform ation
into bit strings for com m unication over a
serial link. This approach not only ac-
com m odates state-of-the-art com m uni-
cation technology, but it also safeguards
investm ents in applications and engi-
neering (based on the object and com -
and devices w ould need to be standard-
ized, thus blocking any technical evolu-
tion and functional com petition. N ever-
theless it m ust be possible to exchange
faulty IED s w ithin the lifetim e of the
S A system . U sing IED s that are com -
pliant w ith the sam e standard in term s
of interoperability w ill facilitate easy
exchangeability.
F re e a rc h i te c tu re
For a standard to be term ed global,it
m ust support the operation philosophy
of utilities around the w orld. It has to
support an arbitrary allocation of func-
tions to devices and should therefore be
capable of supporting centralized and
decentralized system architectures.
L o n g -te rm s ta b i li ty
G iven that the lifetim e of a substation
(prim ary equipm ent) is betw een 40 and
60 years, it is anticipated that com po-
nents of the S A system have to be ex-
changed, on average, around tw o to
three tim es during this period; som e
com ponents m ay need replacem ents on
a m ore regular basis. N aturally over tim e
the substation w ill have to cope w ith the
integration of new com ponents from the
sam e or new suppliers, or it m ay need to
be extended. The point is that irrespec-
tive of the changes, interoperability m ust
be m aintained indefinitely, or to be m ore
specific, the standard has to be future-
proof. This requirem ent not only applies
to substation devices, but also to the
S w ith
yard
G IS
or
A IS
R elay
room
in G IS
R elay
house
in A IS
O perating
room
L e g a c y S A H a rd w i re d S A I E C 6 1 8 5 0 b a s e d S A L o c a ti o n
1 S u b s ta ti o n a u to m a ti o n ( S A ) a rc h i te c tu re fro m h a rd w i re s o v e r p ro p ri e ta ry p ro to c o ls
to I E C 6 1 8 5 0
S C A D A -distribution, m etering
C opper cables
C opper cables C opper cables
S ensors &
actuators
B ay cubicle B ay cubicle B ay cubicle
to other bays to other bays
1 9 6 5 1 9 8 5 2 0 0 5 Ye a r
G IS G IS
G IS
* The process bus is not a m ust in IEC 61850 but only an option
M M I, C ontrol board
C opper
cables
S tation bus and
P rocess bus*
according to IEC 61850
P roprietary
S tation bus
S erial com m unication
(Fiber optics)
S erial com m unication
(Fiber optics)
G atew ay G atew ay
H M I H M I
to any future technological develop-
m ents.
A s the IEC 61850 standard evolved, oth-
er features, such as the definition of tw o
tim e-critical services the fast transm is-
sion of trip-type signals and sam pled
analog current and voltage values w ere
added. These tim e-critical services en-
able the extension of the serial links to be
used betw een any intelligent electronic
device (IED ) and the electronic interfaces
near the sw itchyard equipm ent. D em and-
ing m arket requirem ents, such as the
shortening of transfer tim es dow n to
3 m s and tim e synchronization in the
order of 1 s had also to be considered.
P erhaps the cornerstone of the standard
is the innovative extensible m arkup lan-
guage or XM L-based substation configu-
ration description language (S C L). S C L
form ally describes the configuration of
IED s in term s of functionality (eg, circuit
breaker control, m easurem ents and sta-
tus values) com m unication addresses
and services (eg, reporting). It also de-
scribes the sw itchyard layout and its re-
lation to the functions im plem ented in
the IED s.

T h e e m e rg e n c e o f a n e w s ta n d a rd
W hen the authors of the IEC 61850 stan-
dard first sat together, they identified a
list of m arket requirem ents that w ould in-
fluence the form the new standard w ould
take. The m ost im portant ones w ere in-
teroperability, free architecture and long-
term stability.
I n te ro p e ra b i li ty
To begin w ith, the standard m ust be able
to support all functions in its application
dom ain substation. Therefore, in addition
to protection, autom ation, control and
m onitoring functions, m any service func-
tions, such as tim e synchronization, self
supervision and version handling have
also to be supported. These functions
are executed by softw are im plem ented in
the IED s. Interoperability in the S A sys-
tem m eans that IED s from different sup-
pliers or different versions from the sam e
supplier m ust be able to exchange and
use inform ation in real tim e w ithout any
protocol converters and w ithout the need
for hum an interpretation.
It is im portant to distinguish interopera-
bility from interchangeability. If IED s w ere
also to be interchangeable, the functions
Event recording
Protection
9 T h e c o n c e p t o f I E C 6 1 8 5 0
physical device itself are dealt w ith by an
LN class nam ed LP H D .
O nly if a LN class for som e function is
m issing it m ay be substituted by generic
LN classes that have restricted sem antic
m eaning. M ore dem anding, how ever, is
the extension of LN s and data according
to the strict and restrictive extension
rules of the standard, including nam e
spaces as unam biguous references to
sem antic m eaning. These rules preserve
interoperability, even in cases w here ex-
tensions are required.
For the functional identification of each
data in the context of the sw itchyard, a
hierarchical plant designation system
shall be used for the designation of sub-
station objects and functions preferably
according to IEC 61346 [6].
T h e s e rv i c e s o f th e d a ta m o d e l
Interoperability requires the standardiza-
tion of not only the data objects but also
the access to them . Therefore, standard-
ized abstract services also belong to
IEC 61850. The m ost com m on ones
include:
R ead: reading data such as the value
of an attribute
W rite: for exam ple w riting the value of
a configuration attribute
C ontrol: controlling sw itching devices
and other controllable objects using
standardized m ethods such as select
before operateor direct operate
R eporting: for exam ple, event driven
reporting after value changes
Logging: the local storage of tim e-
stam ped events or other historical data
G et directory: in other w ords, to read
out the data m odel (im portant part of
self-description)
m unication service m odel). Therefore,
the standard is future-proof. The m ap-
ping of the data m odel to the com m uni-
cation stack is also standardized in
IEC 61850 to ensure interoperable com -
m unication 2 .
T h e o b je c t-o ri e n te d d a ta m o d e l
The basic data m odel structure defined
in the IEC 61850 standard is application
independent. H ow ever, depending on
the scope of the standard, the object
m odel classes, as issued in edition 1 of
the standard 3 [2], are related to the
dom ain substation. O bject m odels for
w ind pow er [3], hydro pow er [4] and dis-
tributed energy resources [5] w ere added
at a later date. A ll application functions,
including the data interfaces to the pri-
m ary equipm ent, are broken dow n into
the sm allest feasible pieces, w hich m ay
com m unicate w ith each other and, m ore
im portantly, m ay be im plem ented sepa-
rately in dedicated IED s. In IEC 61850,
these basic objects are called logical
nodes (LN s). The class nam e of the LN
refers to the function the data objects
belong to. The data objects contained in
a LN m ay be m andatory, optional or con-
ditional. The data objects them selves
contain attributes
1
, w hich m ay be seen
as values or detailed properties of the
data objects. This hierarchical data m od-
el is illustrated in 4 .
S ince the class nam es of LN s and the full
nam es of data objects and attributes are
standardized, they form ally provide the
sem antics of all exchanged values w ithin
the scope of IEC 61850. LN s m ay be
grouped into logical devices (LD s) w ith
non-standardized nam es, and these LD s
are im plem ented in servers residing in
IED s. The com m on properties of the
C om m unication netw orks and system s
in substations
P art 1: Introduction and overview
P art 2: G lossary
P art 3: G eneral requirem ents
P art 4: S ystem and project m anagem ent
P art 5: C om m unication requirem ents for
functions and device m odels
P art 6: C onfiguration description language
for com m unication in electrical
substations related IED s
P art 7-1: P rinciples and m odels
P art 7-2: A bstract com m unication
service interface
P art 7-3: C om m on data classes
P art 7-4: C om patible logical node (LN )
classes and data classes
P art 8-1: M apping to M M S and to
IS O /IEC 8802-3
P art 9-1: S am pled values over serial
unidirectional m ultidrop
point-to-point link
P art 9-2: S am pled values over IS O 8802-3
P art 10: C onform ance testing
3 T h e p a rts o f th e s ta n d a rd I E C 6 1 8 5 0
E d i ti o n 1
2 T h e s p li t b e tw e e n d a ta m o d e l a n d c o m m u n i c a ti o n s ta c k
D a ta
m o d e l
I S O /O S I
s ta c k
D o m a i n s u b s ta ti o n :
W hat data have to be
com m unicated?
C o m m u n i c a ti o n
te c h n o lo g y :
H ow are the data
com m unicated?
S low
changes
Fast
changes
D e fi n i ti o n
D ata and services according
to the dom ain substation
M a p p i n g
D ata m odel to the
com m unication stack
S e le c ti o n
IS O /O S I stack from the
m ainstream
S P L I T !
C
o
m
m
u
n
i
c
a
t
i
o
n
A ll application
functions, including
the data interfaces
to the prim ary
equipm ent, are
broken dow n into
the sm allest fea-
sible pieces, w hich
m ay com m unicate
w ith each other
and be im plem ent-
ed separately in
dedicated IED s.
1 0 A B B review special report
firm ation), w hich term inates the control
service.
P e rfo rm a n c e re q u i re m e n ts
The transfer tim e of m essages betw een
the sending application (eg, protection
function issuing the trip) and the receiv-
ing application (breaker function per-
form ing the breaker operation) is deter-
m ined by the requirem ents of functions
that depend on this m essage transfer.
A s a protection trip is tim e critical, w ith
a w orst case taking around 20 m s, it is
allocated to the m ost dem anding trans-
fer requirem ent class, w hich m eans 3 m s.
The transfer of sam ples using the S V
service is also assigned to this require-
m ent class to avoid, for exam ple, delays
in fault detection by protection. The re-
quirem ents have to be fulfilled not only
by the IED s but also by the S A system
design. The transfer tim e of a G O O S E
m essage over a serial link is com pared
in 6 and 7 w ith the response tim e of
a hardw ired contact circuit.
To properly analyze the sequence of
events in the system and for post-event
fault analysis, the events need a tim e
stam p w ith an accuracy against real tim e
of 1 m s; this incidentally is better than
any contact change. H ow ever, tim e syn-
chronization for current and voltage
sam ples, w hich are needed for differen-
tial or distance protection or global pha-
sor com parison, requires an accuracy of
the order of 1 s! The 1 m s accuracy lev-
el is achieved using the sim ple netw ork
tim e protocol (S N TP ) directly over a se-
rial com m unication link, w hile one pulse
per second (pps) over a separate w ire or
fiber achieves the 1 s tim e synchroniza-
tion. In the future, the IEEE 1588 stan-
File transfer: for configuration,
disturbance recording or historical
data
G O O S E: G O O S E is the acronym for
generic object oriented system event
and is a service used for the speedy
transm ission of tim e critical inform a-
tion like status changes, blockings,
releases or trips betw een IED s
S am pled value (S V): the S V service
quickly transm its a synchronized
stream of current and voltage sam -
ples for voltages and currents
The control service im plem enting the
select before operate w ith enhanced
securitym ode is illustrated in 5 in
the context of a sw itch operation: The
S ELEC T com m and is issued at the
operators H M I and com m unicated to the
bay control unit represented by the LN
C S W I. D epending on the system archi-
tecture the S ELEC T com m and is con-
firm ed either by the bay controller or the
circuit-breaker IED , w hich is represented
by the LN XC B R . W hen the operator re-
ceives a positive acknow ledgem ent (ie,
S elected) from the C S W I, he then is-
sues an O P ER ATE com m and. O nce per-
m ission has been granted, an operation
request is sent via the bay controller to
the circuit breaker (XC B R ). The execu-
tion of the com m and request is positively
acknow ledged using the m essage O p-
erated.A dditional feedback is provided
using the reporting service, w hich is initi-
ated by the start of the circuit-breaker
contact m ovem ent (S tarted) and w hen
the end position is reached (N ew posi-
tion). In cases w here a com m and ser-
vice w ith enhanced security is chosen,
the end result is confirm ed by the com -
m and term ination m essage (C m d con-
5 A n i llu s tra ti o n o f th e c o n tro l s e rv i c e
C ontrol circuit
for
com m ands
Indication
circuit
for breaker
position
H M I C S W I
S elect
S elected
O perate
O perated
S tarted
N ew position
C m d
term ination
XC B R C ircuit
breaker
I
n
d
i
c
a
t
i
o
n

C
o
m
m
a
n
d

s
e
q
u
e
n
c
e
Enhanced security
S
e
l
e
c
t
e
d

s
t
a
t
e
4 H i e ra rc h i c a l d a ta m o d e l
Im plem entation
G rouping
D ata
Value
P roperties
B re a k e r I E D ( B I E D )
N am es not
standardized
N am es
standardized
B re a k e r c o n tro lle r
X C B R ( c i rc u i t b re a k e r
P o s ( p o s i ti o n )
S tVa l ( s ta tu s v a lu e )
Interm ediate-state/off/on/bad-state
q ( q u a li ty )
good/invalid/reserved/questionable
t ( ti m e s ta m p )
tim e of change
P hysical device (IED )
defined as S erver
Logical device (LD )
Logical node (LN )
D ata (O bject)
A ttribute
A ttribute
A ttribute
G O O S E is the
acronym for generic
object oriented
system event and
is a service used
for the speedy
transm ission of
tim e critical infor-
m ation like status
changes, block-
ings, releases or
trips betw een IED s.
1 1 T h e c o n c e p t o f I E C 6 1 8 5 0
The station bus m ay be configured in
a ring topology w ith ring redundancy, a
redundant star for IED s w ith dual port
redundancy or any solutions w hich fulfill
the requested perform ance and reliability
requirem ents. The process bus m ay also
adopt a ring or even a star topology, but
at the very least one or m ore point-to-
point connections.
S C L s u p p o rte d e n g i n e e ri n g
In order to process data received from
IED s, the receiving IED needs to know
how this data has been sent; how it has
been coded; w hat it m eans in the con-
text of the sw itchyard; and the function-
ality of the sender. To be able to transfer
this inform ation from one tool to another
in a standardized w ay, the XM L-based
S C L language has been defined.
Edition 2 [8] of the standard scheduled
for publication in 2010 w ill define proto-
cols for the connection of IED s w ith
tw o ports to tw o redundant com m unica-
tion system s or the form ation of a ring
w ith redundant traffic in both ring direc-
tions
3
.
T h e s ta ti o n a n d p ro c e s s b u s e s
The station bus connects the IED s for
protection, control and m onitoring (ie,
bay units) w ith station level devices (ie,
the station com puter w ith H M I and the
gatew ay to the netw ork com m unication
center (N C C )) using w hatever services
are required by the applications. The
process bus connects the bay units w ith
the sw itchyard devices, and the com -
m unication of status inform ation, com -
m ands and trips is the sam e as for
the station bus 9 .
H ow ever, getting
synchronized sam -
ples of current and
voltage to the rele-
vant protection IED s
using the S V ser-
vice is quite chal-
lenging.
The conversion of
proprietary signals from nonconventional
instrum ent transform ers for cur rent and
voltage or of the analog values from con-
ventional instrum ent transform ers to
IEC 61850 telegram s is done using an
IED called a m erging unit (M U ). A n M U
m erges the 3-phase currents and volt-
ages, including the zero-com ponents of
one bay high-precision tim e-synchro-
nized by definition. The process bus
functionality for the sw itchgear is pro-
vided by the so-called breaker or sw itch
IED s (B IED , S IED ). The free allocation of
functions allow s the creation of IED s w ith
both B IED and S IED , and M U functional-
ities.
dard [7] w ill allow high-precision tim e
synchronization also directly over Ether-
net.
T h e c o m m u n i c a ti o n s ta c k a n d
m a p p i n g
IEC 61850 has selected m ainstream
technology for the com m unication stack,
ie, a stack structure according to the
IS O /O S I layers consisting of Ethernet
(layers 1 and 2), TC P /IP (layers 3 and 4)
and m anufacturing m essaging specifica-
tion, M M S , (layers 5 to 7). The object
m odel and its services are m apped
to the M M S application layer (layer 7).
O nly tim e-critical services, such as S V
and G O O S E are m apped directly to the
Ethernet
2
link layer (layer 2) 8 .
E th e rn e t b u s a rc h i te c tu re s a n d d u a l
p o rt re d u n d a n c y
IEC 61850 uses Ethernet as the basic
com m unication technology, currently
w ith a speed of 100 M B it/s at the IED s.
S upport of m essage priorities by m an-
aged sw itches allow s tim e critical re-
quirem ents, such as the 3 m s applica-
tion to application transfer tim e, to be
m et. Tree and ring topologies are possi-
ble w ith sw itches. H ow ever, according
to the first edition of the standard, the
Ethernet ring topology w ith autom atic
reconfiguration in case of link or sw itch
failures is the m ost com m on architecture
for system s. Tree topologies are not used
very often because the sw itch represent-
ing the root is a potential single point of
failure. It should be noted that in the ring,
one sw itch connection has to be alw ays
open creating in effect a kind of tree
topology to avoid endlessly circulating
telegram s. The open sw itch connection
is autom atically closed if a failure in any
of the ring links or in another sw itch cre-
ates an unw anted second opening (ie, a
tree recovery algorithm ).
6 T ra n s fe r ti m e d e fi n i ti o n w i th h a rd w i re d c o n ta c ts
P hysical link (w ire circuit)
A pplication
function 1
P hysical
device P D 1
Transfer tim e t = t
a
+ t
b
+ t
c

t
a
t
b
t
c
A pplication
function 2
P hysical
device P D 1
7 T ra n s fe r ti m e d e fi n i ti o n w i th c o m m u n i c a ti o n s ta c k s
Transfer tim e t = t
a
+ t
b
+ t
c

t
a
t
b
t
c
P hysical device P D 1 P hysical device P D 2
C oding
in the
stack
A pplication
function 2
A pplication
function 1
D ecoding
in the
stack
8 M a p p i n g to th e s ta c k
D ata M odel (D ata and services)
Ethernet link layer w ith priority tagging
C lient-S erver
IP
TC P
M M S
G O O S E S am pled values
Ethernet physical layer w ith 100 M B /s
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
I
S
O
/
O
S
I

S
t
a
c
k

L
a
y
e
r
s
Tim e critical services
M apping
S uch is the potential of
IEC 61850 that in the future
it is hoped it can be applied
right across the pow er
system spectrum .
K la u s -P e te r B ra n d
Wo lfg a n g Wi m m e r
A B B S ubstation A utom ation
B aden, S w itzerland
klaus-peter.brand@ ch.abb.com
w olfgang.w im m er@ ch.abb.com
F o o tn o te s
1 The attributes carry the data values.
2 N ow adays in com m unication technology, m ost
efforts and m oney are invested in Ethernet
technology. In fact Ethernet is now successfully
com peting w ith the traditional field busses.
3 P lease refer to "S eam less redundancy " on
page 57 of this issue of ABB Review.
R e fe re n c e s
[1] B rand, K .P., Lohm ann, V., W im m er, W . (2003)
S ubstation A utom ation H andbook. U A C ,
IS B N 3-85759-951-5. (w w w .uac.ch).
[2] IEC 61850 Ed. 1 (2002-2005). C om m unication
netw orks and system s in substations. w w w .iec.ch.
[3] IEC 61400-25-2. C om m unications for
m onitoring and control of w ind pow er plants
P art 25-2: Inform ation m odels for W ind turbines.
[4] IEC 61850-7-410. C om m unication netw orks
and system s for pow er utility autom ation
P art 7-410: H ydroelectric pow er plants
C om m unication for m onitoring and control.
[5] IEC 61850-7-420. C om m unication netw orks
and system s for pow er utility autom ation
P art 7-420: B asic com m unication structure
D istributed energy resources logical nodes.
[6] IEC 81346. Industrial system s, installations and
equipm ent and industrial products S tructuring
principles and reference designations.
[7] IEEE 1588 2008. S tandard for a precision
clock synchronization protocol for netw orked
m easurem ent and control system s.
[8] IEC 61850 Ed2 (scheduled for 2010).
C om m unication N etw orks and S ystem s for
P ow er U tility A utom ation. w w w .iec.ch.
[9] B aass, W ., B rand, K .P., G erspach, S ., H erzig,
M ., K reuzer, A ., M aeda, T. (2008). Exploiting the
IEC 61850 potential for new testing and
m aintenance strategies. P aper presented at the
m eeting of the International C ouncil on Large
Electric S ystem s (C IG R E), P aris, P aper B 5-201.
the system . The principles of engineering
w ith S C L files are show n in 1 0 .
A s the entire IED data m odel is visible via
the com m unication system , including
possible configuration and setting para-
m eter values, and all this can be de-
scribed in S C L, the S C D file is also a
m edium usable by other applications in
the life-cycle of the system [9], such as
the archiving of the system configuration
in a standardized form and the transfer
of protection param eters to protection
system configuration tools. It m ay be
used in sim ulation and testing tools or
to check the configuration (version) state
of the running system against the intend-
ed state. W hile these applications are
outside the scope of IEC 61850 as a
com m unication standard, they are of ad-
ditional benefit for the user of the stan-
dard.
A fu tu re -p ro o f o u tlo o k
The long-term value of IEC 61850 for
users lies in its object-oriented hierarchi-
cal data m odel approach w ith its high-
level standardized sem antics and the use
of m ainstream com m unication technolo-
gy, w hich is dom inated by Ethernet.
H ow ever, IEC 61850 is m uch m ore than
just a norm al com m unication protocol.
S uch is its potential that in the future it is
hoped IEC 61850 can be applied right
across the pow er system spectrum .
A second edition of the standard is
scheduled for publication in 2010. It w ill
contain m any additional features, such
as the support of dual port redundancy
for IED s.
To allow the exchange of data betw een
tools from different m anufacturers,
IEC 61850 introduces a basic engineer-
ing process: B ased on the system speci-
fication and the description of the IED s,
the required device types are selected
and their form al description, in the form
of an IC D file, is loaded into the system
configuration tool. The system configura-
tion tool then defines the m eaning of IED
functions in the context of the sw itchyard
by allocating LN s to elem ents of the
sw itchyard single-line diagram . The data
flow betw een all IED s is then defined,
and all IED nam es and com m unication
related addresses and param eters are
configured. The resulting S C D file is a
com prehensive description of the entire
system in the context of IEC 61850. This
file is then im ported into the device tools
of the different IED s to com plete their in-
dividual configuration in the context of
S IED S IED
S IED S IED
9 S ta ti o n a n d p ro c e s s b u s e x a m p le s
H M I
C u w ires
S w itchgear/sw itchyard
S IED S IED
B IED B IED M U M U
S tation
level
B ay
level
P rocess
level
S ta ti o n
b u s
P ro c e s s
b u s
N etw ork
level
P rocess interface
S tation
gatew ay
S tation
com puter
P rotection C ontrol
P rotection
& control
P rotection C ontrol
1 0 E x a m p le o f e n g i n e e ri n g w i th S C L
IED C onfiguration
D escription IC D
IED C onfiguration
D escription IC D
IED configuration
description (IC D ) D evice
capability
S ystem specification description (S S D )
S ystem configuration description (S C D )
D evice data
D evice data
D evice data
D evice data
D evice data
D evice data
S C D per IED
D evice in the system
S ystem
docum entation
R eusable for testing,
m aintenance and extensions
S tand-alone device
configuration
S ystem
configuration
S ystem and device
configuration and
data flow
system as built
S ingle-line diagram w ith
allocated functions
represented by logical nodes (LN s)
system as specified
D evice (IED )
D evice
specific tool
D
e
v
i
c
e

s
e
l
e
c
t
i
o
n
S ystem
configurator
The station bus
connects the IED s
for protection, con-
trol and m onitoring
w ith station-level
devices w hile the
process bus con-
nects the bay units
w ith the sw itchyard
devices.
1 3 C o m m o n d e n o m i n a to r
M A R T I N O S T E R TA G With th e a d v e n t o f th e I E C 6 1 8 5 0
s ta n d a rd in 2 0 0 2 , a n d its g ro w in g s u c c e s s in s u b s ta tio n
a u to m a tio n a n d la te r in s e v e ra l o th e r in d u s trie s , A B B w a s
fa c e d w ith th e c h a lle n g e o f a d a p tin g a v a rie ty o f its p ro d -
u c ts to th e n e w te c h n o lo g y in a re la tiv e ly s h o rt tim e . T h is
w a s s u c c e s s fu lly a c c o m p lis h e d in p a rt d u e to th e d e v e lo p -
m e n t o f c o m m o n c o m p o n e n ts d e s ig n e d fo r u s e in a w id e
v a rie ty o f A B B p ro d u c ts .
C om m on com ponents have
helped AB B adopt the
IEC 61850 substation com m u-
nication standard in record tim e
C om m on
denom inator
A lready in its fourth edition, the guideline
serves as a good introduction to the
soon-to-be-available second edition of
the IEC 61850 standard and defines the
stepw ise transition from the first edition
to the second.
B ased on the principles defined in the
application guideline, A B B started to
develop reusable
com ponents for a
variety of products
and tools in its
portfolio. Tw o im -
portant com po-
nents are the com -
m unication stack
and a set of librar-
ies that handles
IEC 61850 object
m odels and con-
figurations 2 .
C o m m u n i c a ti o n s ta c k
The IEC 61850 com m unication stack 3
is effectively a piece of softw are that im -
plem ents the com m unication services for
IEC 61850-8-1 m anufacturing m essage
A
B B w as heavily involved in the
process of creating the IEC
61850 standard. As the stan-
dardization w as in progress,
and in order to enable a fast tim e-to-m ar-
ket, the standard w as already being im -
plem ented in products in parallel to the
standard's nalization betw een 2002 and
2004. In order to support the standardiza-
tion, interoperability tests w ere arranged
for these early im plem entations. As AB B
believed that the standard w ould be a
success, it realized that a w ide variety of
products w ould need to support it. The
com pany thus decided to im plem ent re-
usable com ponents right from the begin-
ning. The results of these activities w ere
reported back to the IEC organization that
used them to im prove the clarity and qual-
ity of the standard. In addition, they w ere
presented to the public at the IEEE PSR C
m eeting in Sun Valley, U SA in 2003 1
and at the H annover Fair in April 2004.
A t that tim e, A B B outlined a clear step-
w ise strategy for the introduction of
IEC 61850 into its solutions in its very
ow n internal IEC 61850 application
guideline. This guideline defines the m an-
datory subset of IEC 61850 services that
is supported by all A B B devices, it adds
additional A B B internal convention, and
clarifies and details certain sections
w here the standard leaves room for in-
terpretation.
specification (M M S ) and generic object
oriented substation event (G O O S E) serv-
ers and clients. M ore im portantly, it hides
the nitty-gritty details from the m ore ap-
plication oriented research and develop-
m ent found in A B B s products, thereby
allow ing developers to concentrate on
providing application value to custom ers.
C urrently, the com m unication stack is in-
tegrated into m ore than 12 A B B prod-
ucts or product fam ilies, w ith a grow ing
num ber of host platform s set to follow
suit as IEC 61850 continues to be ac-
cepted by other industries. The benefits
of the IEC 61850 stack include portabili-
2 U s e o f c o m m o n c o m p o n e n ts i n a v a ri e ty o f A B B p ro d u c ts
M icroS C A D A P ro / S YS 600 C C O M 600 R EB 500
IEC 61850 com m unication
Engineering and
testing tools
R elion
630 series 650 series IED s 670 series IED s

C om m on IEC 61850
com ponents:
com m unication stacks
tool libraries
1 I n te ro p e ra b i li ty d e m o n s tra ti o n b e tw e e n m a jo r v e n d o rs a t th e I E E E P S R C m e e ti n g i n S u n
Va lle y i n th e U n i te d S ta te s i n 2 0 0 3
C urrently, the IEC 61850 com -
m unication stack is integrated
into m ore than 12 A B B prod-
ucts or product fam ilies, w ith
a grow ing num ber of host
platform s set to follow suit.
R EB 500
Engineering
t ti too
1 5 C o m m o n d e n o m i n a to r
show s several im portant aspects that
need to be observed to successfully
capitalize on com ponent develop-
m ent 4 .
For the upcom ing edition 2 of the
IEC 61850 substation com m unication
standard, com m on com ponents w ill con-
tinue to play an im portant role in sup-
porting a m arket-driven, phased upgrade
and m igration strategy for A B B s product
and tool portfolio. C lose links to IEC
w orking groups com bined w ith im ple-
m entation in parallel to standardization
w ill allow A B B to m aintain and strength-
en its front-row position in IEC 61850
technology.
M a rti n O s te rta g
A B B S ubstation A utom ation P roducts
m artin.h.ostertag@ ch.abb.com
XM L-based substation configuration lan-
guage (S C L) com es into play. In addition,
the com m unication stack, w hich is a re-
usable com ponent, needs configuration
inform ation to enable such com m unica-
tion to take place.
C onfiguration tools rely on a softw are
com ponent that interprets and generates
both S C L and stack configuration files.
This com ponent allow s the tools to w ork
on an object-oriented data m odel rather
than parsing and interpreting raw files. In
addition, it helps to avoid syntax and se-
m antic errors and contributes to the high
quality of A B B s products.
B e n e fi ts o f A B B s a p p ro a c h
The m ain benefits of such a com ponent
include:
The ability to carry out m aintenance
and im provem ents in one place,
allow ing all products to benefit
The uniform im plem entation of
functionality, w hich is crucial for
interoperability betw een devices from
A B B and third-parties
D etailed testing and experience in the
field. B ecause it is integrated into a
variety of products, its functionality is
tested w ay beyond w hat can be achieved
for product-specific im plem entations.
S u c c e s s fa c to rs fo r c o m p o n e n t re u s e
A B B s experience in the developm ent of
com m on com ponents for IEC 61850
ty, and it runs on different real-tim e oper-
ating system s as w ell as under W indow s
for P C -based products and tools.
F i le h a n d li n g a n d o b je c t m o d e li n g
Each product to be integrated into an
IEC 61850-based system needs to have
its functionality defined in a standardized
w ay that enables it to com m unicate w ith,
and process inform ation from other prod-
ucts in the system . This is w here the
3 U s e o f I E C 6 1 8 5 0 s ta c k c o m p o n e n t
IEC 61850 IED interface (IA L and direct w rite/read to application)
IEC 61850 S ER VER / C LIEN T D B
C
o
n
f
i
g
u
r
a
t
i
o
n
h
a
n
d
l
e
r
S
C
L
-
p
a
r
s
e
r
C ontrol
handler
IEC 61850
m odel H .
R eport
handler
G O O S E
handler
FileXfer
handler
S etting
handler
S ubst.
handler
M od
handler
Layer 4
Layer 3
Layer 2
Layer 1
S N TP
client
Third-party M M S protocol S W
IED A pplication/D ata interface
IEC 61850-8-1 M M S / IEEE802.3 G O O S E
S YN 5200 / S YN 5201 / S YN 5202
4 A s p e c ts th a t n e e d to b e o b s e rv e d to
c a p i ta li z e o n c o m p o n e n t d e v e lo p m e n t
A lw ays be a step ahead of the products
and tools that w ill use the com ponents. In
other w ords anticipate upcom ing or future
IEC 61850 specific com m unication
requirem ents that com ponent users m ight
not even be aw are of at the tim e they are
im plem ented in the product.
Fast reaction and prem ium support during
the integration phase of the products
research and developm ent. In other
w ords, the com ponent research and
developm ent team m ust have a very
service provideroriented m indset in that
requests and problem s from product
research and developm ent team s m ust be
dealt w ith relatively quickly.
Version traceability. K eep track of the
distributed versions and version
dependencies, ie, w hich version of a
product contains w hich version of the
com ponent.
B ackw ard com patibility of the com ponent
is very im portant. If substation prim ary
equipm ent can have a life expectancy of
betw een 30 and 40 years, it is an absolute
certainty that the substation autom ation
system w ill be extended and upgraded at
least once during this tim e. A s a conse-
quence, different versions of products and
tools need to co-exist in the sam e system .
This puts certain requirem ents on the
definition of the com ponents softw are
interfaces and the w ay functionality is
im plem ented.
The proper clustering of functionality in a
w ay that keeps the level of detail
com ponent users need to know about
IEC 61850 at an appropriate level. This in
turn allow s the product engineers to focus
m ore on application m odeling and concept
developm ent.
For the upcom ing
edition 2 of the
IEC 61850 com -
m unication stan-
dard, com m on
com ponents w ill
continue to play an
im portant role in
supporting a m ar-
ket-driven, phased
upgrade and m igra-
tion strategy for
A B B s product and
tool portfolio.
A B B product developm ent based
on the IEC 61850 standard
J A N N E S TA R C K , S T E VE N A . K U N S M A N S in c e th e p u b lic a tio n
o f th e rs t e d itio n in 2 0 0 4 , th e I E C 6 1 8 5 0 c o m m u n ic a tio n
s ta n d a rd h a s p ra c tic a lly b e c o m e th e d e -fa c to s ta n d a rd in
th e c o n te x t o f s u b s ta tio n a u to m a tio n . A lm o s t fro m th e
m o m e n t o f its p u b lic a tio n , in te llig e n t e le c tro n ic d e v ic e s
( I E D s ) s u p p o rtin g I E C 6 1 8 5 0 s ta rte d to a p p e a r o n th e
m a rk e t. H o w e v e r, fo r m a n y o f th e s e I E D s , it s o o n b e c a m e
c le a r th a t p e rfo rm a n c e a n d e x ib ility w e re s a c ri c e d in th e
ra c e to g e t to th e m a rk e t rs t. A B B to o k a s o m e w h a t
d iffe re n t a p p ro a c h . E x p e rts fro m w ith in th e c o m p a n y
p a rtic ip a te d in th e s ta n d a rd iza tio n w o rk fro m d a y o n e , a n d
a s it w a s b e in g d e v e lo p e d it w a s d e c id e d to u p g ra d e A B B s
R e lio n
p ro te c tio n a n d c o n tro l p ro d u c t fa m ily to s u p p o rt th e

I E C 6 1 8 5 0 s ta n d a rd . B y th e tim e th e s ta n d a rd c a m e in to
e x is te n c e , A B B h a d a lre a d y a d o p te d a p h ilo s o p h y o f n a tiv e
I E C 6 1 8 5 0 im p le m e n ta tio n in th a t th e s ta n d a rd is im p le -
m e n te d fro m th e s ta rt in n e w p ro d u c t d e v e lo p m e n ts . To d a y,
A B B s I E C 6 1 8 5 0 -b a s e d p ro te c tio n a n d c o n tro l p ro d u c ts a re
re c o g n ize d a s th e n u m b e r o n e c h o ic e fo r b o th u tility a n d
in d u s tria l p o w e r s y s te m s .
P ushing the lim its
1 7 P u s h i n g th e li m i ts
IEC 61850 im plem entationphilosophy,
w hich stated that from then on the stan-
dard w ould be im plem ented in new prod-
uct developm ents.
N a ti v e I E C 6 1 8 5 0 i m p le m e n ta ti o n
In a typical IEC 61850 native design, the
functionality of the IED m ust consider the
entire process, including specification
and evaluation, system and device engi-
neering, system com m issioning, and op-
erations and m aintenance. A n IEC 61850
native IED should provide:
A full set of protection and control
data to S A system s, and to other
IED s and third-party tools in com pli-
ance w ith the defined data m odels
and LN s to achieve a high level of
interoperability
Fast com m unication and application
perform ance, w hich is critical w hen
using generic object oriented substa-
tion events (G O O S E) peer-to-peer
com m unication for distributed
protection algorithm s, and com plex
station and bay control interlocking
schem es over Ethernet in the substa-
tion station bus
A dherence to data m odeling and
substation configuration language
(S C L) inform ation available for system
engineering, device configuration,
diagnostics and com m issioning
tools
A s the standard becam e better know n,
how ever, engineers realized the benefits
it provided presented them w ith an op-
portunity to rethink IED platform and ar-
chitecture developm ent and introduce
new conceptual ideas for substation au-
tom ation. A B B w as taking this approach
even before the standards publication
by fully and genuinely im plem enting the
standard in m any of its devices, engi-
neering and com m issioning tools, and
substation autom ation (S A ) system s. In
fact, A B B had already adopted a native
W
ith the introduction of the
IEC 61850 standard, the
w orld of substation auto-
m ation has taken its big-
gest technology leap since the intro-
duction of m icroprocessor-based pro-
tection and control devices in the early
1980s.
A s soon as the standard w as published,
intelligent electronic devices (IED s) sup-
porting IEC 61850 started to appear on
the m arket. The speed at w hich this hap-
pened w as achieved by upgrading exist-
ing IED platform s w ith an internal or ex-
ternal gatew ay serving as a proxy to
the IEC 61850 Ethernet-based protocol.
B ecause this approach left the IED archi-
tecture, internal softw are and tools
unchanged, protocol conversion w as
required to enable com m unication be-
tw een existing IED s and a m odern
IEC 61850-based substation. A t the
tim e, the IEC 61850 standard w as just
one of a num ber of protocols to expose
the IED s internal inform ation, w hich w as
m apped to the IEC 61850 data m odels
and logical nodes (LN s). The internal ar-
chitecture did not differ from other point
or register-based com m unication proto-
cols (eg, D N P V3.00 and M O D B U S ).
W hile these early im plem entations result-
ed in a fast tim e-to-m arket, perform ance
and flexibility w ere sacrificed as a result.
1 P h a s e ti m e o v e rc u rre n t ( P T O C ) o v e rc u rre n t fu n c ti o n d e s i g n
P T O C L o g i c a l N o d e C la s s
D a ta O b je c t E x p la n a ti o n M a n d a to ry / I E D D e s i g n
N a m e O p ti o n a l
M od M ode M X
B eh B ehavior M X
H ealth H ealth M X
N am eP lt N am e P late M X
O pC nt O peration C ounter O
O pC ntR s O peration C ounter R eset O
S tr S tart M X
O p O perate M X
Tm A S t A ctive C urve C haracteristic O
Tm A C rv O perating C urve Type O X
S trVal S tart Value O X
Tm M ult Tim e D ial M ultiplier O
M inO pTm m s M inim um O perate Tim e O X
M axO pTm m s M axim um O perate Tim e O
O pD ITm m s O perate D elay Tim e O X
TypR sC rv Type of R eset C urve O X
R sD ITm m s R eset Tim e D elay O X
D irM od D irectional m ode O
Even before its
publication in
2004, A B B w as
extending the lim its
of IEC 61850 w ith
its full im plem enta-
tion of the stan-
dard in m any of its
devices, tools and
substation autom a-
tion (S A ) system s.
this is dependent on the product and in-
tended application 1 . The supported
standard data objects are docum ented
in the m andatory m odel im plem entation
conform ance statem ent (M IC S ) docu-
m ent.
In the next stage, the standard LN and
its selected functionality are m odeled
using the S C L, w hich describes the func-
tion structures, data objects and data
types of an LN 2 . W ith the defined
function structures according to the S C L,
it is possible to autom atically generate
the skeleton of the application data ac-
cess functions (read, w rite) for the IED
system softw are. These functions are in-
herited and directly linked to the protec-
tion algorithm (eg, P TO C ) data in the IED
architectures core protection and con-
trol subsystem . This direct m apping pro-
vides a high-perform ance interface to
the IED s IEC 61850 com m unication
stack, w hich in turn m akes the data ac-
cessible to the station bus 3 . N o addi-
tional conversion of protection and con-
trol data is required to support the
com m unications architecture and proto-
col. S tructures based on LN s can also
have a function for settings, w hich are
directly visible to the S A system via the
com m unication stack.
In general, the IEC 61850 standard pro-
vides a solid foundation for the design of
native IEC 61850 protection and control
IED s due to the fact that data m odels
have been defined by an international
w orking group com posed of experts in
fully base the IED s functionality on the
data m odel and LN s as defined in the
standard. A s it now stands, protection
and control algorithm s, w hich provide
the core IED functionality, are m odeled
and im plem ented fully according to the
IEC 61850 standard rules. In the new ar-
chitecture, the data m odels are support-
ed directly in the protection and control
functions, m aking the LN data directly
accessible from the com m unications
services. W ith this approach the data
m apping and con-
version process is
not required, som e-
thing that is a key
factor in IED per-
form ance. IED data
are therefore di-
rectly available w ith-
out tim e-consum -
ing additional pro -
cessing.
W hen a new pro-
tection function,
such as overcur-
rent protection, is im plem ented, the
standard phase tim e overcurrent (P TO C )
LN -class definition is the foundation
for m odeling the protection algorithm .
D epending on product and application
requirem ents, all m andatory and select-
ed optional attributes of the LN -class
are used in the function design. The
IEC 61850 standard requires that the
m andatory data objects m ust exist in the
data m odel of the device. The optional
parts are only used w hen applicable, and
Ease of adaptation and be future proof
to evolving technologies enabled by
Ethernet and IEC 61850, for exam ple,
utilizing IEC 61850-9-2 sam pled values
and m icrosecond-level tim e synchroni-
zation accuracy via IEEE 1588
A B B s R elion
protection and control

product fam ily w as one of the first to un-
dergo the IEC 61850 transform ation. The
products required a com pletely new plat-
form architecture that w ould integrate
com m unication services and data repre-
sentation into the core protection and
control applications. This developm ent
w as carried out in parallel w ith the devel-
opm ent of the IEC 61850 standard (pre-
2004) to ensure that the future A B B
R elion fam ily w as designed from the be-
ginning to support IEC 61850.
T ra n s fo rm i n g th e R e li o n I E D s
O ne of the key factors that led to suc-
cessful product transform ations w as to
2 V i s u a li z a ti o n o f th e s u b s ta ti o n c o n fi g u ra ti o n la n g u a g e ( S C L ) 3 D a ta s tru c tu re i n a P T O C fu n c ti o n
A B B s R elion
protection and
control product fam ily w as
one of the first to undergo the
IEC 61850 transform ation, a
developm ent that w as carried
out in parallel w ith the devel-
opm ent of the standard.
ticular LN structure. A fter a protection
task cycle com pletes, the IED process-
ing subsystem perform s a signal com -
parison to identify new data in the
IEC 61850 connected datasets. In the
IEC 61850 data m odel, m ost data-
change driven activities are based on the
datasets, for exam ple, event reporting
and G O O S E data publishing. The IED
change detector identifies changes in
the datasets and if a new value is detect-
ed, the dataset and its connected func-
tionality are triggered. In an IED using
G O O S E, the internal high-priority sub-
system executing the G O O S E function is
triggered. S ubsequently, the m odified
data is sent as quickly as possible
through the IED com m unication interface
to the S A system station bus using a
G O O S E m ulticast m essage. G O O S E
m ulticast m essages are unsolicited
broadcasts w hich do not require any cy-
clical data polling m echanism . D ata
structures used in G O O S E include direct
access to the IED internal database, and
because the internal data m odel exactly
m atches the IEC 61850 standard, no
data conversions are required 4 .
In the sam e w ay, the IED s IEC 61850 na-
tive design yields high-perform ance sub-
scribing G O O S E datasets from other
IED s in the local sub-netw ork. A s G O O S E
m essages are processed in the data link
layer in the Ethernet stack, this does not
require additional processing through the
TC P and IP layers. This type of Ethernet
com m unication is very fast since the data
is retrieved directly from the IED com m u-
nications hardw are interface. The IED s
G O O S E processing capabilities can de-
code the m essage in less than 1 m s and
the field. W ith standard-based data m od-
eling, faster developm ent of IED applica-
tion functions and com m unication inter-
faces can be obtained. The im provem ents
are due to the LN structures, w hich are
inherent in the protection application.
This therefore m akes data access from
the IEC 61850 based S A system to the
IED 's internal protection and control al-
gorithm s very com putationally efficient
and elim inates the need for tim e-con-
sum ing protocol conversion processing.
T h e p e rfo rm a n c e o f a n a ti v e
R e li o n I E D
IED architectures designed to support
IEC 61850 from the start need to ensure
that the delay in com m unicating control
signals, analog values and other tim e
critical data betw een the process and
the IED s is as sm all as possible. In tradi-
tional IED s, the binary and analog signals
w ere processed by the IED hardw are I/O
subsystem . In IEC 61850-based archi-
tectures, conventional w iring has been
elim inated and these signals are trans-
m itted and received via the com m unica-
tions interface. Thus, the com m unication
interface in the new IEC 61850-based
IED s m ust be very efficient at processing
the com m unication data.
The fast G O O S E perform ance of a R elion
IED is critical in a native IEC 61850 im -
plem entation to allow control signal pro-
cessing as if it w ere a traditional hard-
w ired IED . D uring IED algorithm execution
or task cycle, the data values of a pro-
tection function (eg, the protection start
in P TO C ) can change if an overcurrent is
detected on a feeder, and this in turn up-
dates the database supporting the par-
In IEC 61850-based
archi tectures, con-
ventional w iring
has been elim inat-
ed and binary and
analog signals are
transm itted and
received via the
com m unications
interface.
4 G O O S E d a ta a n d m e s s a g e h a n d li n g
IED
D B
P rotection
task
G O O SE R X
task
C hange
detector
G O O S E TX
task
Physical I/O
S tation
bus
P TO C
M od
ctlVal
B eh
operTm
H ealth
stVal
N am eP lt
q
Loc
stS eld
O pC ntR s
pulseC onfig
P os
R R EC
C S W I
IED
6 I E C 6 1 8 5 0 e v e n t h a n d li n g
IED
D B
P rotection
task
IEC 61850
M M S stack
C hange
detector
Physical
I/O
P TO C
M od
ctlVal
B eh
operTm
H ealth
stVal
N am eP lt
q
Loc
stS eld
O pC ntR s
pulseC onfig
P os
R R EC
C S W I
IED
5 I E C 6 1 8 5 0 h a n d li n g i n c a s e o f a s e p a ra te c o m m u n i c a ti o n s m o d u le
P rotection
task
C hange
detector
P hysical
I/O
IED
Internal
bus
M ain C om m
S tation bus
Internal
bus
IEC
61850
P TO C
M od
ctlVal
B eh
operTm
H ealth
stVal
N am eP lt
q
Loc
stS eld
O pC ntR s
pulseC onfig
P os
R R EC
C S W I
IED
are defined and used in the IED tool and
connectivity packages, and are available
for the user w hen an IEC 61850 configu-
ration (S C L) is exported using the IED
tool.
In the new IED architecture, traditional
com m unication protocols, such as M od-
bus, IEC 60870-5-103 and D N P 3.0 are
m apped from the IEC 61850-based data
m odel and event datasets. The conve-
nience of protocol m apping stem s from
the fact that IEC 61850 includes m ost of
the different data and service types re-
quired for legacy protocols. A com pari-
son of legacy protocols and IEC 61850
typically show s that legacy protocols
have a subset of services and data types
available. M any custom ers prefer to use
legacy protocols and the internal archi-
tecture of an IED m ust be ready to sup-
port m ultiple protocols. IEC 61850, how -
ever, is the preferred superset in term s of
functionality and services.
S y s te m e n g i n e e ri n g
IED s belonging to the R elion product
fam ily are configured according to the
rules defined in the IEC 61850 standard.
The configuration is based on library in-
stallable client driver (IC D ) files available
in the IED connectivity packages w here
these library files include the IED s data
m odel. In the top-dow n engineering pro-
cess, the system integrator selects the
appropriate library IC D files representing
the R elion IED types and builds the sys-
tem configuration description (S C D ) ac-
cording to the substation design. In this
phase, the substation configuration al-
ready includes all IED s, the single-line
diagram , the G O O S E links betw een the
devices and the event definitions. The
S C D file is im ported to the IED tool w here
the IED s are param eterized and config-
ured according to the application/pow er
system specifications 7 .
In sm all and sim ple IEC 61850 based
substations, the system engineering of
the substation autom ation system can
be done using a bottom -up process. The
w orkflow starts from the IED tool, w hich
creates the set of IED s and exports the
initial S C D file to the system configura-
tion tool. U sing connectivity packages,
the IED tool exports the S C D file, includ-
ing a default single-line diagram and
datasets for event reporting. In m any
cases, these values, as such, fit custom -
er specifications. In the system configu-
its associated tim estam p and quality at-
tributes are stored in an internal event
queue by the IED s change detector. A t
the sam e tim e, the IED s com m unication
interface is triggered and starts sending
queued events to clients (eg, the gate-
w ay or station H M I) on the station
bus 6 . A s internal data m odels and
stack data structures are based on the
sam e IEC 61850 data m odel, there is no
need to carry out any additional data
processing.
A B B has created an internal IEC 61850
application guideline that defines the ap-
propriate default dataset nam es and
uses; for exam ple, S tatN rm l for protec-
tion events and S tatU rg for prim ary
equipm ent value changes. In this w ay,
different IED s in the R elion fam ily have
sim ilar properties and are easier to con-
figure in the S A system . D efault values
deliver only the m odified subscribed
G O O S E data to the IED s internal data-
base, w hich m akes it im m ediately acces-
sible to the next execution of the protec-
tion and control algorithm s. A put
operation is a single data value copy
from a G O O S E fram e to the internal LN
structure database 4 . N o conversion is
required as the data in both the IED da-
tabase and incom ing G O O S E m essage
com ply w ith IEC 61850 data types. The
next application execution checks for
new input values and processes them
accordingly.
If G O O S E w as based on a non-native
IEC 61850 im plem entation, a conver-
sion from an internal data m odel to an
IEC 61850 data m odel w ould be needed.
It w ould therefore be difficult to achieve
the perform ance classes for protec-
tion com m unication as stated in the
IEC 61850 standard. In som e architec-
tures, the processing of horizontal com -
m unication utilizes a different processor
on a separate IED com m unication card
or an external gatew ay, w hich w ould
m ake the perform ance and configuration
even m ore challenging 5 .
R eporting events to S C A D A system s
using standard buffered or unbuffered
reporting services is based on the sam e
m echanism that is im plem ented to de-
tect G O O S E data changes. W hen a
change of data is activated by an appli-
cation, for exam ple, a protection start
signal in P TO C , the new data value and
7 S y s te m e n g i n e e ri n g w o rk flo w
IED
lib IC D
Engineering
w orkplace
S C D
C ID
S ystem
configurator
S ubstation
gatew ay
IED IED IED
File transfer and
param etrization w ith
IEC 61850 services
IED C apabilities (LN , D O ,)
A ssociations, relation to
single line, preconfigured
reports, G O O S E
S ystem specification
(S ingle line, IED s,)
File transfer
local
File transfer
rem ote
E n g i n e e ri n g
e n v i ro n m e n t
S A s y s te m
IED
configurator
The configuration
of IED s belonging
to the R elion prod-
uct fam ily is based
on IC D files avail-
able in the IED
connectivity pack-
ages.
therefore capable of interoperating w ith
other system s offering IED protocol ser-
vices and w hich have S C L files exported
from the IED tool. A typical IEC 61850
certificate from K EM A is show n in 8 .
To date the IEC 61850 standard confor-
m ance test does not test IED perfor-
m ance. H ow ever, part 5 of the standard
defines, for exam ple, a perform ance
class P 1, type 1A Tripfor protection
purposes using horizontal G O O S E com -
m unication. A ccording to this definition,
data exchange tim es betw een IED s m ust
not exceed 10 m s in distribution autom a-
tion applications.
Tw o IED s, the R EF630 and R EF615, both
m em bers of the R elion fam ily, w ere in-
stalled in A B B s U niG ear m edium -voltage
sw itchgear cubicles and tested accord-
ing to the procedures stated in the
IEC 62271-3 standard
2
9 . This stan-
dard, applicable to sw itchgear and con-
trol gear, specifies equipm ent for digital
com m unication w ith other parts of the
substation and its im pact on testing.
S pecifically, the standard defines perfor-
m ance test procedures w ith reference to
the IEC 61850 perform ance classes and
the requirem ents w hich the IED m ust ful-
fill for these applications.
The test results m ore than proved the
concept. In fact the functional and per-
form ance test results have been nothing
short of im pressive. The R elion IED s ful-
filled the perform ance class defined by
ration tool, the system engineer can add
G O O S E links and if required, custom ize
the details of the single-line diagram and
event datasets. The system engineer ex-
ports the com pleted S C D file back to the
relay setting tool w here the IED 's appli-
cation configuration is finalized.
In both top-dow n and bottom -up system
engineering processes, the final result is
an S C D file w hich is needed for the con-
figuration of substation S C A D A system s
and gatew ays. The substation section of
the S C D file can be used as an inform a-
tion source to create the substation sin-
gle-line diagram , w hich in turn m inim izes
any additional w ork needed for the de-
sign of the substations graphical dia-
gram . In this w ay, the S A system greatly
benefits from the self-descriptive feature
of the IEC 61850 defined S C L.
Te s ti n g a n d u s i n g R e li o n I E D s
The capability of the native IEC 61850
im plem entation and the IED design have
been thoroughly tested as part of the de-
velopm ent validation as have products
already on the m arket at the A B B U C A
level B certified S ystem Verification test
C enter (S VC )
1
. The m ost im portant test
is the basic IEC 61850 conform ance test.
A ll R elion IED s have been tested and
certified according to the procedures de-
fined in part 10 of the IEC 61850 stan-
dard. For end users and m anufacturers,
the certificate states that no nonconfor-
m ities to the standard have been found
in the behavior of the IED s. The IED s are
All R elion IED s have
been tested and
certi ed according
to the IEC 61850
standard; for end
users and m anu-
facturers, this
m eans that no non-
conform ities to the
standard have been
found in the behav-
ior of the IED s.
8 A K E M A c e rti fi c a te 9 I E D m e m b e rs o f th e R e li o n fa m i ly a n d th e i r i n s ta lla ti o n i n A B B 's U n i G e a r M V s w i tc h g e a r
K e e p p u s h i n g th e li m i ts
The introduction of the IEC 61850 stan-
dard and its achievem ent in enabling
device level interoperability is consid-
ered a m ajor advancem ent over legacy
and proprietary protocols. A B B s native
IEC 61850 R elion product fam ily im ple-
m entation dem onstrates that interopera-
bility is only one goal that can be realized
by this standard. The product architec-
tures provide increased value and high
perform ance, and are capable of m eet-
ing the m ost dem anding application
requirem ents. A nother m ain goal of
IEC 61850 is that it future proofs a com -
panys investm ent. This can only be done
w hen the products m eet tom orrow s an-
ticipated perform ance requirem ent and
engineering tools, and processes can be
easily extended in future station expan-
sion. A B B continues to explore advanced
applications and engineering im prove-
m ents. Its G O O S E perform ance is best
in its class and the goal is to continue to
push the benefits of IEC 61850 w ell
beyond w hat is now possible.
J a n n e S ta rc k
A B B D istribution A utom ation
Vaasa, Finland
janne.starck@ fi.abb.com
S te v e n A . K u n s m a n
R aleigh, U nited S tates
steven.a.kunsm an@ us.abb.com
R e fe re n c e s
[1] IEC 61850 (2003). C om m unication netw orks
and system s in substations, International
S tandard.
[2] IEC 62271 (2006). H igh-voltage sw itchgear and
controlgear.
[3] H akala-R anta, A ., R intam aki, O ., S tarck, J.
(2009). U tilizing P ossibilities of IEC 61850 and
G O O S E. C IR ED , P rague.
F o o tn o te s
1 The U C A users group m aintains the IEC 61850
standard and defines different levels of certified
IEC 61850 test centers. Independent labs are
generally classed as level A test centers w hile
m anufacturer test labs, like A B B S VC , are
certified as level B test centers. For m ore
inform ation on S VC , please also read "Verified
and validated" on pages 2328 of this ABB
Review S pecial R eport
2 The tests w ere w itnessed and reported by
K EM A .
S C L. The com plete topology of both the
prim ary and secondary netw ork of a sub-
station is described in the S C D file. This
inform ation source can be used to auto-
m atically generate graphical diagram s on
the station H M I, such as the com m uni-
cation netw ork overview including super-
vision data and the station single-line di-
agram . W hile this reduces the engineering
w ork needed, it also im proves quality
w ith respect to consistency because of
the single inform ation source being used.
Furtherm ore, m aintenance and extension
w ork becom es m ore efficient and the
efforts needed for testing can be auto-
m ated or reduced. M oreover, based on
the static inform ation available in the
S C D file together w ith the online status
inform ation from the substation IED s,
new types of applications can be devel-
oped.
O ne exam ple of a new application al-
ready im plem ented in todays products,
and w hich is very beneficial to operators,
is dynam ic busbar coloring. The prim ary
netw ork layout (ie, conducting equip-
m ent, objects) is know n from the S C D
file. Together w ith the actual positions
and m easurem ents reported from the
IED s, all inform ation is available to per-
form this task.
A m ore com plex function or application
is station interlocking. A lgorithm s can be
im plem ented to dynam ically adapt the
interlocking rules based on the current
substation netw ork topology. A gain, the
required inform ation to perform this to-
pology-based interlocking can be re-
trieved from the S C D file and the online
data provided by the IED s.
A nd last but not least, the IEC 61850
LN s allow the im plem entation of distrib-
uted functions, w hich w ill no doubt lead
to new applications in the not too distant
future.
IEC 61850-5 for protection applications
using G O O S E. In addition, they show ed
that the signaling betw een devices using
G O O S E w as faster than w ith traditional
hardw ired signals 1 0 .
The perform ance capability of the R elion
product fam ily allow s the custom er to
fully exploit the benefits of the IEC 61850
standard in S A system s and sm art grid
solutions. B ased on a native im plem en-
tation, the R elion product technology is
w ell prepared for tom orrow 's challenges.
This surely puts A B B 's solution in a pre-
em inent position am ong com petitors
w orldw ide.
S A a p p li c a ti o n p e rs p e c ti v e s fo r
I E C 6 1 8 5 0 tra n s m i s s i o n a p p li c a ti o n s
The benefits of IEC 61850 over tradition-
al com m unication protocols are not
strictly lim ited to IED s, open infrastruc-
tures and device interoperability in m ulti-
vendor system s.
To explain further, m ajor features of the
standard that are used include the self-
describing IED s and the standardized
1 0 I E C 6 2 2 7 1 -3 p e rfo rm a n c e te s t re s u lts
P rotection blocking data exchange tim e betw een R elion

IED s using hard
w ired signals (m ax) including protection activation tim e 32 m s
P rotection blocking data exchange tim e betw een R elion
IED s using
IEC 61850 G O O S E (m ax) including protection activation tim e 16 m s
S ignal transfer tim e betw een R elion
IED s using hard

w ired signals (m ax) 24 m s
S ignal transfer tim e betw een R elion
IED s using
IEC 61850 G O O S E (m ax) 8 m s
A B B continues to
explore advanced
applications and
engineering im -
provem ents and
the goal is to
continue to push
the benefits of
IEC 61850 w ell
beyond w hat is
now possible.
2 3 Ve ri fi e d a n d v a li d a te d
S T E P H A N G E R S P A C H , P E T E R WE B E R Wh e n th e I E C 6 1 8 5 0 sta n d a rd wa s
in tro d u c e d , A B B n o t o n ly im p le m e n te d it in its p ro d u c t p o rtfo lio , b u t a lso
e sta b lish e d a syste m ve ri c a tio n a n d va lid a tio n c e n te r ( S VC ) , to ve rify
c o rre c t im p le m e n ta tio n . I n th is te st c e n te r, e a c h a n d e ve ry p ro d u c t,
syste m c o m p o n e n t, a p p lic a tio n a n d to o l is te ste d in a re a l-life syste m
e n viro n m e n t to d e m o n stra te its sp e c i e d fu n c tio n a lity a n d p e rfo rm a n c e .
C o m p le te syste m s a re ve ri e d to e n su re th a t th e y fu lly m e e t th e re q u ire -
m e n ts in te rm s o f c o m m u n ic a tio n , in te g ra tio n , fu n c tio n a lity, se c u rity a n d
p e rfo rm a n c e .
A B B has its ow n
system verification
and vaildation center
Verified and
validated
The editor of the Testing Q uality A ssur-
ance P rogram (Q A P ) w as also the editor
of P art 10, Testing R equirem ents, of
the IEC 61850 docum ent. Furtherm ore,
m any m em bers of TC 57/W G 10 are on
U C A Iugs Technical S ubcom m ittee for
the R esolution of 61850 Issues (Tissues).
The group w orks closely w ith standards
organizations to support technology
transfer, resolution of issues and assists
users in the testing and im plem entation
of products. O ne m ajor focus of U C A I-
ugs charter is the Testing Q uality A ssur-
ance P rogram (Q A P ).
A re c o g n i z e d I E C 6 1 8 5 0 c o n fo rm a n c e te s t
c e n te r
U C A Iug has qualified S VC as an
IEC 61850 test facility and com petence
centre. S VC is thereby officially qualified
to test and certify the IEC 61850 confor-
m ity of products and confer the users
group label to them .
S VC is represented on U C As IEC 61850
testing subcom m ittee. This strengthens
the centers ability to support upcom ing
IEC 61850 test procedures and keeps it
inform ed about U C A - and IEC -driven
changes regarding IEC 61850 testing.
Validation m eans:
Is the right product being built?
Is it m eeting the operational need in
the designated environm ent?
Tests perform ed as part of S VC valida-
tion focus on the behavior of the product
in the specified system environm ent.
B oth verification and validation are nec-
essary throughout the product-develop-
m ent cycle 2 .
U C A I u g
The U C A
1
International U sers G roup
(U C A Iug) is a not-for-profit consortium of
leading utilities and their supplier com pa-
nies. U C A Iug is dedicated to prom oting
the integration and interoperability of
electric/gas/w ater utility system s through
technology based on international stan-
dards. The group is an international or-
ganization and strongly supports open
standards and the free exchange of in-
form ation. O ne activity of U C A Iug is the
provision of a forum in w hich m em bers
coordinate their efforts in relation to the
various technical com m ittees. A lthough
the group does not w rite standards as
such, its activities affect the definition of
standards as w ell as the im plem entation
of testing and product certification pro-
gram s. O ne focus has been on the C om -
m unication N etw orks and S ystem s in
S ubstations" section of IEC 61850.
U C A Iug com plem ents the activities of
international standards organizations.
For exam ple, U C A Iug w orks closely w ith
IEC . The convener of IEC TC 57/W G 10
(IEC 61850) is on several U C A Iug com -
m ittees and is an advisor to their board.
T
he purpose and scope of S VC
is sum m arized in 1 . The cen-
ter does not only test individu-
al devices, but also tests their
integration into larger system s and fur-
therm ore provides support and under-
standing of the standard, leading to its
im proved integration and im plem enta-
tion.
Ve ri fi c a ti o n v e rs u s v a li d a ti o n
The relative concepts of verification and
validation are som etim es a cause of con-
fusion.
Verification m eans:
Is the product being built according to
the original specification?
A re the specified requirem ents being
m et?
Verification testing should thus be about
the products conform ance to the origi-
nal specification.
In S VC verification, all tests perform ed
assure the product accords w ith the de-
fined substation autom ation require-
m ents. These requirem ents are defined
and review ed by a group of experts ap-
proxim ately once per year and have to
be im plem ented in each A B B product.
1 A B B s s y s te m v e ri fi c a ti o n a n d v a li d a ti o n
c e n te r ( S VC )
A ll actions of the S VC are focused on the
follow ing targets:
Ensure a com m on understanding for
the system integration of products
Ensure a com m on understanding for
the engineering process.
A im at a consistent philosophy w ithin
A B B system s and products
Identify and initiate the closing of gaps
betw een system requirem ents and
product features
Im prove the quality of the system
solution in architecture, integration
and perform ance
D ecrease dem and for specialized
expertise w ithin a custom er system project
B uild up integral know how in testing and
system integration of third party products
R educe cost and execution tim e of
custom er projects
The S VC s purpose is to ensure the high
quality of A B B s system autom ation system
solutions and provide a platform for the
exchange of experience betw een IEC 61850
experts w ithin A B B .
Each and every
product, system
com ponent, appli-
cation and tool is
tested in a real-life
system environ-
m ent to dem on-
strate its specified
functionality and
perform ance.
F o o tn o te s
1 U C A : U tility C om m unications A rchitecture
The fact that standard products from dif-
ferent suppliers or different products
from the sam e supplier conform to the
standard is in itself no guarantee for their
interoperability. The reason for this is that
com m unication profiles can differ.
A com m unication profile defines the
m andatory subset of a standard con-
sisting of the selected options that
are im plem ented.
Thus various pro-
files from different
products m ay con-
form to the stan-
dard but m ay still
not be totally in-
teroperable 3 .
It is the responsi-
bility of the system
integrator to check
the interoperability
of tw o or m ore products. The require-
m ents for this are based on the confor-
m ance statem ents of the different prod-
ucts and the system functionality
B e y o n d c o n fo rm a n c e te s ti n g :
s y s te m v e ri fi c a ti o n a n d v a li d a ti o n
O nce a product has passed conform ance
testing, it can be accepted for form al
system verification and validation.
Interoperability testing is neither part of
the scope of the standard nor is it tested
by all U C A Iug accredited test centers or
in all procedures. H ow ever, the verifica-
tion of conform ance is a very im portant
m ilestone.
2 B o th v e ri fi c a ti o n a n d v a li d a ti o n a re p a rt o f th e p ro d u c t-d e v e lo p m e n t c y c le .
S ystem unit system s (S A S )
S ystem unit products (S A P )
S A products w ith IEC 61850
ready for gate 5
S ystem solutions
(C ontrol, P rotection, S A S )
S ystem engineering tools and processes
D efinition of system functionality
S VC
S ystem integration,
verification and validation
3 T h e fa c t th a t p ro d u c ts c o n fo rm to th e s ta n -
d a rd d o e s n o t g u a ra n te e in te ro p e ra b ility.
C om pany B profile
C om pany C profile
Interoperable
profile
IEC 61850
C om pany A profile
Various profiles
from different
products m ay
conform to the
standard but m ay
still not be totally
interoperable.
A n interoperability test looks
at the dynam ic interaction
of at least tw o IED s in a sub-
station autom ation system
covering (as far as possible)
all potential configurations.
Verification and validation
Engineering
Functionality
P erform ance
R edundancy
S ecurity
B ased on m ost com m on use
Interoperatbility
A B B -products
3
rd
party products
in A B B system s
Tools
IEC 61850 conform ance
IED s
Tools
required. For exam ple, one vendor m ight
im plem ent only G O O S E
2
and a second
vendor m ight im plem ent only G S S E
3
.
B oth devices w ould pass conform ance
tests but w ould not be able to interoper-
ate.
A n interoperability test looks at the dy-
nam ic interaction of at least tw o IED s in
a substation autom ation system (S A S )
covering (as far as possible) all potential
configurations. This is especially im por-
tant for their interaction in executing dis-
tributed functions. Furtherm ore, it per-
m its the verification of the perform ance
of services provided by com m unication
equipm ent such as sw itches (including
delays caused). This test m ust be per-
form ed independently of specific projects
as a kind of type test for the system .
S uch testing w ill reduce the risks for cus-
tom er projects considerably. The interop-
erabillity of the different configuration
and engineering tools (based on S C L
4 C o n fi g u ra ti o n o f th e S VC s y s te m
The goal of
IEC 61850 is the
interoperability
of IED s in S A S s.
The system test
should therefore
be part of R &D
and conform ance
testing.
132 kV voltage level E1 sub transm ission 245 kV voltage level D 1 transm ission
S VC s y s te m c o n fi g u ra ti o n o v e rv i e w s i n g le li n e s
33 kV voltage level H 1 distribution 11 kV voltage level H 1 distribution
A ll c o n fi g u ra ti o n s a re b a s e d o n s y s te m u n i t s o lu ti o n s to e n s u re " m o s t c o m m o n u s e " o f th e I E D s /S A S
and XM L) is also im porant here. A s a
side effect, this testing also perm its the
system configuration tool and its inter-
face w ith the product tools to be veri-
fied.
Te s t s e tu p , S VC e n v i ro n m e n t
The S VC installation represents all areas
of A B B s system -autom ation activities
from distribution to transm ission appli-
cations (245 kV, 132 kV, 33 kV, 11 kV). A ll
configurations are based on system -unit
solutions to ensure m ost com m on use
of the IED s/S A S .
The prim ary process is com pletely sim u-
lated by process-sim ulation equipm ent.
The related single-line diagram s are
show n in 4 .
F ro m p ro d u c t to li fe c y c le te s ti n g o f
S A s y s te m s
It is not possible to consider the lifecycle
of any S A S w ithout taking into account
the lifecycles of all integrated products.
The process of creating a substation
auto m ation system involves num erous
tests, from the developm ent and produc-
tion of an individual IED to the com ple-
tion of the system . Testing im proves the
quality and reduces costly risks both for
the supplier and the users.
F o o tn o te s
2 G O O S E: G eneric O bject O riented S ubstation
Event, A data-set form at perm itting the
exchange of a w ide range of possible com m on
data.
3 G S S E: G eneric S ubstation S tatus Event. In
contrast to G O O S E this supports only a fixed
data structure.
5 Te s ti n g s e q u e n c e fo r p ro d u c t te s ti n g b y R & D , p e rfo rm e d
i n d e p e n d e n tly o f c u s to m e r p ro je c t
R & D te s ti n g s e q u e n c e
D evice type test Integration test S ystem test
7 Te s ti n g s e q u e n c e fo r c u s to m e r p ro je c t
C u s to m e r p ro je c t te s ti n g s e q u e n c e
Factory test FAT S ite test S AT
6 O v e rv i e w o f R & D te s ti n g s e q u e n c e
D evice
Type Test
Integration
test
S ystem
test
M anufac-
turing Test
Test
related to
P re-condition Executed tests
Function and type tests are perform ed
continuously by the R &D of the
m anufacturer
The product w ith its functions is tested
as stand-alone unit (w hite box)
IEC 61850 conform ance tests
Tests are perform ed in a sm all,
w ell-defined and norm ally fixed IEC
61850 test system
Test of IEC 61850 com m unications and
verification of tools including
com m issioning and application
engineering aspects
Focus on the products and its
interfaces to the rest of the system
(B lack box)
IED configuration tool w ill be tested
also regarding IEC 61850 aspects like
generation and exchange of S C L Files
S W has dedicated m anufacturing test
S pecification and
developm ent of
new functions
based on an
existing platform
or
based on a
new platform
D evice type tests
are finalized
successfully
Integration tests
are finalized
successfully
A ll tests up to
system test
finalized
successfully
C learance for
Integration
Test
C learance for
S ystem Test
R elease for
use in
custom er
projects
P roduct
available for
custom er
projects
P roduct
P roduct
S ystem
P roduct
R esult
Verification of products w ith a clear
focus on IEC 61850 system aspects
Tools and their interaction in the
engineering process (exchange
IEC 61850 S C L files)
Verification of the system under
norm al operation, avalanche and
fault conditions (evaluation
IEC 61850 system perform ance)
S ystem -security testing.
The base for reliable in-house testing is
the quality system of the m anufacturer
and supplier according to ISO 9001/9002
(as far as applicable). The life-cycle testing
sequence can be divided into tw o parts:
Testing independent of the custom er-
specific project, handled entirely by
the R &D organization.
Testing of configurations specific to
the custom er project, com pletely
handled by the system supplier or
system integrator in cooperation w ith
the end-user.
Te s ti n g i n d e p e n d e n t o f th e c u s to m e r-s p e c i fi c
p ro je c t
The test sequence for the standalone
product (w hich can be the device or the
IED ) starts w ith the devices type test and
ends w ith its integration test 5 . The
conform ance test is the type test relating
to standards such as IEC 61850. The
successful passing of type tests is the
prerequisite to begin integration testing.
Integration testing involves testing the
new product in a sm all and fixed test
system . Type tests and integration tests
are perform ed (as a m inim um ) by the
product supplier and (if applicable and
requested) by an independent test au-
thority. N orm ally, the conform ance of the
IED is confirm ed by the issuing of a cer-
tificate. In addition, routine tests or m an-
ufacturing tests perform ed in the pro-
duction chain ensure a constant quality
of delivered devices.
The goal of IEC 61850 is the interopera-
bility of IED s in S A S s. Therefore, the sys-
S everal hundred
IED s can be sim u-
lated in the S VC ,
helping identify the
lim itations of S A
S ystem s.
dures for all labs in accordance w ith
IEC 61850-10 and the U C A Q uality A s-
surance P rogram (Level A independent
lab, Level B m anufacturers lab).
The S VC is an active m em ber of U C A
inter national users group and the
IEC 61850 testing subcom m ittee. In
2007, S VC extended the test centre to
fulfill new upcom ing requirem ents. B e-
sides the verification and validation of
A B B products against IEC 61850-8-1,
activities w ere extended to third party
IED s, redundancy concepts, and
IEC 61850-9-2.
Today the S VC test system com prises a
considerable quantity of relays from A B B
as w ell as from several other m anufactur-
ers. In addition, several hundred IED s
can be sim ulated, helping identify the
lim itations of S A S ystem s in term s of ar-
chitecture, engineering processes, engi-
neering tools, system functionality, sys-
tem security and perform ance.
S VC helps ensure the high quality of
A B B s IEC 61850 offerings through its
verification and validation capabilities
and provide a platform for the exchange
of experience betw een IEC 61850 ex-
perts w ithin A B B . S VC actively influences
further IEC 61850 developm ents both
w ithin and outside A B B .
S te p h a n G e rs p a c h
P e te r We b e r
A B B S ubstation A utom ation S ystem s
stephan.gerspach@ ch.abb.com
peter.w eber@ ch.abb.com
site tests are carried out to prepare the
system for the site acceptance test (S AT).
The testing sequence for custom er proj-
ects consists of project-related tests,
based on the specification for the system
ordered. S uch tests are perform ed by
the system supplier or system integrator
and w itnessed by the custom er. These
tests confirm that the delivered individual
S A S is running as specified 8 .
S u c c e s s fu l o p e ra ti o n o f th e te s t c e n te r
Follow ing the planning and build-up
phase, by m id 2005, S VC w as ready for
operation. In 2006, the center w as quali-
fied by the U C A Iug for use as an
IEC 61850 test facility and com petence
centre. S VC w as the first m anufacturers
test lab in the w orld to earn this level of
qualification. It m eets the high quality
levels set out for com m on test proce-
tem test should also be part of the R &D
testing sequence and conform ance test-
ing. H ow ever, as explained above, both
the content of IEC 61850-10 and the de-
tailed test procedures defined by the
U C A Iug only focus on IED (single prod-
uct) testing. Todays conform ance certifi-
cates are thus no guarantee for interop-
erability from a system perspective 6 .
In sum m ary: S VC takes care of that part
of system testing not covered by the pre-
vious quality assurance steps.
Te s ti n g o f c o n fi g u ra ti o n s s p e c i fi c to
c u s to m e r-p ro je c ts
The custom er-project testing sequence 7
starts w ith the factory test. This is a proj-
ect-related test that prepares the cus-
tom ized system for the factory accep-
tance test (FAT). Follow ing the installation,
8 O v e rv i e w o f te s ti n g s e q u e n c e fo r c u s to m e r p ro je c t
Factory test
Factory
acceptance
test (FAT)
S ite test
S ite
acceptance
test
(S AT)
Test
related to
P re-condition Executed tests
C onfiguration of the full system
P roject assem bled and pre-tested
especially regarding project specific
parts; parts not available in the factory
are sim ulated on IEC 61850 netw ork.
Tests perform ed according to the
agreed test plan.
S ystem test w itnessed by the custom er
C om plete system goes into operation,
fully functional including all connections
to sw itchgear and rem ote system s and
w ork places
Last adaptations if needed
C om plete system w ill be w itnessed by
the custom er.
A ll tests up to
system test
finalized
successfully and
products available
for projects
A ll factory tests
are finalized
successfully
FAT finalized
successfully.
A ll system
com ponents are
installed.
S ystem
com m issioned
on-site
The substation
autom ation
system is
running as
specified
C learance for
shipping,
com m issioning
and S AT
The com plete
substation
autom ation
system is
running as
specified
System handed
over to the
custom er, incl
nal SC D le!
C ustom er
project
C ustom er
project
C ustom er
project
C ustom er
project
R esult
2 9 A te s ti n g e n v i ro n m e n t
T E T S U J I M A E D A T h e te stin g a n d
c o m m issio n in g o f I E C 6 1 8 5 0 -b a se d
su b sta tio n a u to m a tio n syste m s in tro -
d u c e n e w c h a lle n g e s a n d d e m a n d s
fo r a d va n c e d so ftwa re a p p lic a tio n s.
A B B re c o g n ize d th is a t a ve ry e a rly
sta g e o f th e in tro d u c tio n o f I E C 6 1 8 5 0
a n d re d e sig n e d th e e n g in e e rin g a n d
te stin g to o l la n d sc a p e to se rve th e se
p u rp o se s.
A B B s com prehensive suite of softw are testing and
com m issioning tools for substation autom ation system s
A testing
environm ent
T
he IEC 61850 standard is built
m ainly on know n technologies
such as extensible m arkup
language (XM L), Ethernet,
m anufacturing m essaging specification
(M M S ) and transm ission control proto-
col/Internet protocol (TC P /IP ), each of
w hich have a num ber of w ell established
softw are tools to handle them . W hy then
w as it initially quite challenging to deal
w ith IEC 61850-based system s?
The crux of the m atter lies in the ap-
proach taken. IEC 61850 seam lessly
com bines the un-
derlying technology
com ponents and
application aspects
from an integral
system point of
view . Existing tools,
how ever, w ere de-
signed to focus on
specialized single
tasks, for exam ple
c o m m u n ic a tio n
analysis, and leave
out any substation
autom ation appli-
cation aspects, and are therefore no lon-
ger capable of addressing todays chal-
lenges. To overcom e this problem , it w as
evident a new generation of softw are
tools to efficiently m anage and support
the IEC 61850 system integration pro-
cess w as needed.
A B B s approach, taken during the initial
phase of the introduction of IEC 61850,
w as to take the existing expert tools and
identify clear functional gaps in them .
This inform ation w as then used to de-
velop (and afterw ards continuously im -
prove) a com prehensive suite of softw are
testing tools for com m unication, and
protection and control application spe-
cialists in the field of substation autom a-
tion.
W ith the benefit of active participation in
the IEC 61850 standardization group on
its side com bined w ith its in-depth know l-
edge and experience in designing and
building substation autom ation (S A ) sys-
A B B developed the Integrated
Testing Toolbox, a softw are
tool suite used to m anage and
support the IEC 61850 sys-
tem integration process and
w hich has proven invaluable
in m any turnkey S A projects.
tem s, A B B developed the Integrated
Testing Toolbox (ITT), a tool suite w hich
has proven invaluable in over 900 turnkey
S A projects delivered by the com pany.
From the very beginning, A B B s approach
w as to build a tool suite that w ould hide
the com plexity of the technology com po-
nents IEC 61850 is built on and focus on
displaying application relevant data only.
W hile having an in-depth know ledge of
the technologies w as necessary to
achieve this, the com plexity lay in creat-
ing the interfaces that w ould enable the
application and display layer of the test-
ing tool to be tailored to project specific
configuration data.
S u b s ta ti o n c o n fi g u ra ti o n la n g u a g e
( S C L )
O ne of the greatest achievem ents of the
IEC 61850 standard and one of the
things that differentiates it from other
com m unication standards w as the intro-
duction of the substation configuration
language (S C L). S C L m akes it possible
to create files that are used for the ex-
change of configuration data (eg, stan-
dardized object m odels and data flow
configurations of devices in a system )
betw een engineering tools. S everal file
types have been defined in IEC 61850,
and the content of each type depends
on the role of a specific tool (e.g., system
configuration tool or device configuration
tool) that it is created for and the different
evolution phases of the system integra-
tion process.
The system configuration description
(S C D ) file is one such file type, and is de-
fined as the m aster docum ent of a com -
diagnosis and analysis of the running
applications.
C o n fo rm a n c e te s ti n g
O ne very im portant aspect of IEC 61850
system integration is the selection of
standard com plaint intelligent electronic
devices (IED s). C om pliant in the sense
that all selected IED s have been tested
to ensure that they conform to the
IEC 61850 standard and are officially
certified by a test center w hich itself is
accredited by the U C A international us-
ers group. This certification covers the
verification of the data m odel, the stan-
dardized docum entation and a black-box
test of all the com m unication services
the IED supports. The conform ance test
gives a m inim um guarantee that the se-
lected IED s w ill interoperate w ith other
certified devices if they are configured
and loaded correctly w ithin the system .
This prerequisite relieves the testing tools
from research and developm ent related
bits and bytes analysis even m ore.
R e v e a li n g i n c o n s i s te n c i e s
There are often situations, specifically
during the testing and com m issioning
phase of an IEC 61850 based system ,
w here tem porary inconsistencies due to
stepw ise integration, the configuration of
system s parts or sim ply hum an error re-
sult in a situation w here distributed func-
tions do not interoperate. D ebugging can
be very tim e consum ing and often re-
quires expert know -how , w hich is not al-
w ays available. To handle such situations
A B B has developed a tool called the
ITT600 S A Explorer. It sim plifies the diag-
nosis and troubleshooting of IEC 61850-
based S A system s by com bining a set of
plete S A system 1 . For creation and
m aintenance, an IEC 61850 system con-
figuration tool is required.
From the system point of view , the inter-
faces for each device (client or server)
connected to the system are described
in this file. This m akes the com plete S C D
file the central part of the IEC 61850 sys-
tem docum entation, w hich m akes it in-
teresting to be used for all future activi-
ties perform ed on the S A system , such
as testing, m aintenance and extensions.
The engineer no longer needs to w orry
about error-prone m anual configuration
of the testing and analysis tool environ-
m ent; all he has to do is sim ply im port
the project-specific S C D file into the test-
ing tool. This in turn focuses the effort to
w here it is m ost needed, on functional
1 Ty p i c a l c o n te n ts o f a s y s te m
c o n fi g u ra ti o n d e s c ri p ti o n ( S C D ) fi le
D escription of com plete substation
topology and prim ary equipm ent
A ll protection and control devices
(servers), and station level autom ation
system (clients) including the standardized
data m odels of their functionality
A ll com m unication addresses
C om plete horizontal and vertical data-flow
w ithin the system
R elationship betw een S A functionality
and the prim ary equipm ent
2 A p p li c a ti o n a re a s fo r a n a ly ti c a l a n d
d i a g n o s ti c to o ls
3 Ty p i c a l fe a tu re s o f a d i a g n o s i s
a n d a n a ly s i s to o l
The use of project specific data (S C D file)
for configuration
Establishing an online com m unication
connection to the IED s using either static
or dynam ic configured data sets and
control blocks for reports
Visualizing the health of the running system
C hecking data consistencies and
configuration revisions against the S C D file
A nalyzing and verifying running
applications
D ecoding Ethernet traffic to the substation
autom ation (S A ) dom ain language based
on the S C D file
S how ing functional (system -oriented) or
product-oriented addressing of logged data
A B B S approach
w as to build a tool
suite that w ould
hide the com plexity
of the technology
com ponents
IEC 61850 is built
on and focus on
displaying applica-
tion relevant data
only.
IEC 61850-8-1
IEC 61850-9-1 IE
3 1 A te s ti n g e n v i ro n m e n t
To o ls s u p p o rt p ro c e s s e s
To support the A B B project execution
process the IEC 61850 sim ulation tool
out of the ITT tool suite has proven to be
very useful. S pecifically during engineer-
ing phases or factory acceptance tests
w hen not all system com ponents are
physically available but nevertheless ap-
plication tests m ust proceed, sim ulation
of non-existing devices is essential for
efficient w orkflow s.
The IEC 61850 sim ulation tool can be
connected either to the system bus or
directly to an IED 7 . The S C D file that
has been created and used during the
engineering process of the specific S A
system , and w hich is now part of the
com m on system docum entation any en-
gineer should have available w hen he
goes on site, is then loaded into the
tool. In both cases the tool could sim u-
late one or m ore user selected clients/
servers based on the interface descrip-
tion extracted from the S C D file. If the
S C D file is m issing or incom plete, then
the engineering and configuration w ork
has to be com pleted first. B ased on this
sim ulation, application tests on real sys-
tem com ponents can be perform ed. If
the process bus or additional injection
hardw are is used, then closed loop test-
ing of an IED is possible. Typical features
of a sim ulation tool are sum m arized
in 8 .
Various substation autom ation projects
have show n that the m ost obvious and
com m on application for using G O O S E
m essages is interlocking. The horizontal
G O O S E service uses publisher-subscrib-
er com m unication, w hich corresponds to
pow erful online diagnostic tools w ith
built-in intelligence to interpret IEC 61850
data. Typical application areas w ithin an
S A system w here the ITT600 S A Explorer
can be of great value is show n in 2 ,
w hile typical features of a diagnostic and
analytical tool are listed in 3 .
N arrow ing dow n a problem source basi-
cally requires som e quick consistency
checks 4 . O ne such check that can im -
m ediately reveal inconsistencies involves
com paring the correct offline configura-
tion w ith the online com m unication as
it actually is w orld.
The com prehensive decoding by A B B s
ITT600 S A Explorer of an IEC 61850 ge-
neric object oriented substation event
(G O O S E) m essage, w hich is used for
horizontal real-tim e com m unication be-
tw een m ultiple IED s, is illustrated in 5 .
The on-screen display of clear text pro-
tocol and application inform ation, w ith
the m apping of it to the IEC 61850
S C D file in the background, gives an ex-
cellent view of the corresponding online
Ethernet traffic. A dditional checks on the
IEC 61850 object m odel reveal potential
sources of interoperability problem s.
To o ls v i s u a li z e a p p li c a ti o n s
A nother w ay of supporting the testing of
distributed functions is show n in 6 .
H ere the G O O S E m essages from m ulti-
ple IED s can be displayed along a com -
m on tim eline, m aking it easy to follow the
interaction of various applications, such
as interlocking or double com m and
blocking.
4 C o n s i s te n c y c h e c k c o m p a ri s o n o f a n S C D fi le w i th o n li n e
d a ta u s i n g I T T 6 0 0
5 D e c o d i n g th e h o ri z o n ta l E th e rn e t tra ffi c w i th a n I E C 6 1 8 5 0
a n a ly z e r ( I T T 6 0 0 )
The ITT600 S A
Explorer sim plifies
the diagnosis and
troubleshooting of
IEC 61850-based
S A system s by
com bining a set
of pow erful online
diagnostic tools
w ith built-in intelli-
gence to interpret
IEC 61850 data.
Te ts u ji M a e d a
tetsuji.m aeda@ ch.abb.com
neering and reloading of the configura-
tion.
A g ro w i n g tre n d
The IEC 61850 standard is com plex and
cannot be applied w ithout any signifi-
cant softw are sup-
port. The degrees
of freedom and
new possibilities
that it offers, com -
bined w ith varying
levels of IEC 61850
integration, both in
the configuration
tools and IED s
from different sup-
pliers, em phasize
the challenge even
the m ore.
Evidently, the strong trend tow ard the
use of m ore m odern com m unication
technology to distribute m ission critical
data dem ands very advanced integration
and verification processes. To m anage
these challenges, engineering, testing
and com m issioning tools have been de-
veloped w hich incorporate all the possi-
bilities offered by the IEC 61850 stan-
dard. They have been proven to facilitate
and ensure the high standards of A B B 's
project execution.
vertical server-client com m unication. In a
situation w hen a specific IED publishes
data for interlocking, eg, sw itch positions
have failed (and therefore the IED m ust
be taken out of service or disconnected
from the com m unication bus), the sub-
scribers of the now m issing data on the
bus m ust be operated in an interlock-
override m ode. This is because applica-
tions running on the IED s usually refuse
operations w ith obsolete data that have
not been refreshed in tim e by the pub-
lisher. M aintenance concepts for such
situations m ust be considered in order to
ensure that the rem aining healthy or un-
affected parts of the system continue to
w ork undisturbed. This type of situation
can typically occur during the testing and
com m issioning phase w here the sequen-
tial adding of bays including their con-
trol and protection IED s to an energized
system should not lead to m ajor re-engi-
6 H o ri z o n ta l G O O S E c o m m u n i c a ti o n b e tw e e n m u lti p le I E D s w i th I T T 6 0 0
8 Ty p i c a l fe a tu re s o f a s i m u la ti o n to o l
U ses project specific data (S C D file) for
configuration
A n IED specific configuration can be
extracted from the S C D file
The consistent sim ulation of selected IED s
R eal life sim ulation of com m unication
services
H orizontal com m unication repeated
sending of G O O S E m essages and cyclic
sending of sam pled values
Vertical com m unication spontaneous
sending of reports
S etting any data configured in the IED s
selected for sim ulation
Tailored scripts for the sim ulation of sim ple
applications, such as control applications
double com m and blocking
N ote: R eceiving IED s and clients cannot see
any difference betw een sim ulated and real
data on the bus
7 A p p li c a ti o n a re a s fo r s i m u la ti o n to o ls
There is a strong trend tow ard
the use of m ore m odern com -
m unication technology to dis-
tribute critical data and this
dem ands m ore advanced
integration and verification
processes.
IEC 61850-8-1
IEC 61850-8-1
IED sim ulation
IEC 61850-9-2
M erging unit
sim ulation
IEC 61850-9-2
3 3 N e x t g e n e ra ti o n s u b s ta ti o n s
H A N S -E R I K O L O VS S O N , T H O M A S WE R N E R , P E T E R R I E T M A N N S u b sta tio n s
a re a c ru c ia l e le m e n t fo r th e tra n sm issio n a n d d istrib u tio n o f e le c tric a l
e n e rg y. T h e ir p rim a ry ro le is to tra n sfe r a n d tra n sfo rm e le c tric a l e n e rg y
( ste p p in g -u p o r d o wn th e vo lta g e ) . T h is is d o n e with h ig h vo lta g e
switc h in g e q u ip m e n t a n d p o we r tra n sfo rm e rs. I n o rd e r to p ro te c t a n d
c o n tro l, in stru m e n t tra n sfo rm e rs su p p ly th e sta tu s o f th e p rim a ry syste m
to se c o n d a ry e q u ip m e n t. A B B h a s th e e x p e rtise , e x p e rie n c e a n d
te c h n o lo g y to d e sig n a n d b u ild su b sta tio n s o f a n y size .
Im pact of the process
bus
N ext generation
substations
S
ince the first substations w ere
built m ore than 100 years
ago, there has been trem en-
dous developm ent of both the
prim ary equipm ent (sw itchgear, pow er
transform ers, etc.) and the secondary
equipm ent (protection, control and m e-
tering, etc).
A B B has been engineering and con-
structing substations from their very be-
ginning and has delivered m ore substa-
tions than any other supplier. The first
substations deployed had air-insulated
sw itchgear (A IS ). The developm ent focus
for A IS w as on circuit breaker (C B ) tech-
nology that w ould increase reliability and
reduce m aintenance. In 1965 A B B deliv-
ered the w orlds first substation w ith gas-
insulated sw itchgear (G IS ). W ith G IS the
footprint of substations can be reduced
by about 60 percent, by housing all pri-
m ary conductors w ithin earthed S F
6
gas-
insulated alum inum tubes. O ver the years
new generations of G IS have been devel-
oped, providing todays G IS w ith, am ong
other things, a considerably sm aller foot-
print (for m ore detail see C om pact and
reliableon pages 92-98 of ABB Review
issue 1/2009).
D ue to the reduced m aintenance of C B s,
new substation design principles
em erged for A IS in the late 1990s. The
disconnecting function w as still required
but m ore for m aintenance of overhead
lines and pow er transform ers. This led to
the developm ent of tw o types of solu-
tions w ith disconnect sw itches (D S s) in-
tegrated w ith the C B function. O ne w as
a hybrid (PA S S
TM
), w hich has a separate
D S design in the sam e gas com partm ent
as the C B . A nother one w as the discon-
necting C B (D C B ), w hich uses the sam e
contact for both breaking and discon-
necting functions. D ue to the reduced
m aintenance of C B s and the protection
by S F
6
gas of the D S sprim ary contacts
from external pollution, the availability
and reliability of A IS substations using
hybrid or D C B has increased. Further-
m ore the footprint of A IS substations us-
ing this technique can now be reduced
to about 50 percent.
The latest step in substation develop-
m ent com es w ith the introduction of the
standard IEC 61850-9-2 for the process
bus interface. For
prim ary equipm ent,
this m eans con-
ventional instru-
m ent transform ers
(C IT) that use cop-
per, iron and insu-
lation m aterial pro-
viding analogue
values (1 A , 110 V)
can be exchanged
for fiber-optic sensors that send a pro-
cess bus digital signal via fiber optic ca-
bles to m etering, protection and control
equipm ent. A s the use of sensors in-
creases gradually over tim e the require-
m ent for a secondary system to support
both C IT and non-conventional instru-
m ent transform ers (N C IT) during this
transition period w ill becom e apparent.
This requirem ent is obvious w hen ex-
tending substations, since the new bays
w ill contain N C ITs and existing bays w ill
contain C ITs.
The greatest physical im pact of process
bus w ill be on A IS w ith live tank C B s or
D C B s, w here the m easuring transform -
ers can be integrated in the C B or D C B ,
allow ing the substations footprint to be
reduced substantially. For hybrid and G IS
solutions, the footprint reduction w ill be
less significant as the insulation distance
betw een prim ary and secondary equip-
m ent is already reduced by the use of
S F
6
gas. H ow ever, the process bus w ill
enable the use of non conventional volt-
age transform ers (VTs) m aking equip-
m ent m uch lighter (a traditional VT is
quite heavy). Further, the m anufacturing
tim e can be reduced since all adapta-
tions can be done w ith softw are and the
hardw are can be standardized.
B a y le v e l
P ro c e s s le v e l
S ta ti o n le v e l
N e tw o rk c o n tro l
S A w i th s ta ti o n b u s
T ra d i ti o n a l
M M I / c o n tro l b o a rd
S A w i th s ta ti o n &
p ro c e s s b u s
1 D e v e lo p m e n t o f s e c o n d a ry s y s te m s fo r s u b s ta ti o n s
event recording
protection
S C A D A -distribution, m etering
C opper cables
C opper cables C opper cables
S ensors &
actuators
B ay cubicle B ay cubicle B ay cubicle
IED IED
IED IED
N C C
S A S S A S
N C C N C C
R TU
to other bays to other bays
S tation bus S tation bus
G atew ay/
protocol conv.
G atew ay/
protocol conv.
1 9 7 5 1 9 9 5 2 0 1 0 Ye a r
C opper
cable 1
P rocess bus
G IS
G IS G IS
The latest step in substation
developm ent com es w ith the
introduction of the standard
IEC 61850-9-2 for the pro-
cess bus interface.
The introduction of the process bus w ill
also m ean changes regarding interfaces
for C B s and D S s. A ll signals, digital and
analogue, to and from the control room
can now be run via process bus in a few
optical fibers instead of tons of copper
cables. The C B s and D S s w ill include I/O
electronics for signal transfer from opti-
cal to electrical and vice versa.
S e c o n d a ry s i d e d e v e lo p m e n ts
The digital (r)evolution has provided tech-
nical solutions for substations. D igital
technology w as first im plem ented in sub-
stations in the 1970s, providing com m u-
nication channels from the substations
to control centers 1 .
D uring the early 1990s, w ith the in-
creased capacity and speed of com put-
ing and com m unications technology,
digital protection and control devices,
the so called IED s (intelligent electronic
devices) w ere installed in substations.
D igital com m unication betw een the IED s
w as introduced using station bus w ith
protocols that differed betw een m anu-
facturers 1 .
W ith the introduction of the IEC 61850
standard, substations are m oving into a
new era regarding com m unications. A ll
m anufacturers can adapt their products
to the sam e com m unication m odel and
protocol, m aking it possible for different
m anufacturers IED s to talk w ith each
otherand thus interoperate on the sam e
station bus, replacing all previous propri-
etary protocols.
ing can be m ade at the factory before
delivery to site, leading to a secondary
system of higher overall quality. A lso the
architecture of the secondary system s
w ill change com pared w ith todays sub-
stations. The bay house principle, in
w hich the relay and control equipm ent
are decentralized in the sw itchyard, w ill
disappear since there w ill be no copper
connections betw een the sw itchgear ap-
paratus and m etering, protection and
control devices, as the process devices
can now be m ounted directly onto the
prim ary apparatus. The central control
room of the substation w ill becom e the
natural location for relay and control
equipm ent connected by fiber optics to
m arshalling cubicles close to the prim ary
equipm ent. Interface equipm ent, such as
m erging units w ill be located in the m ar-
shalling cubicle.
P ro c e s s B u s c o n n e c ti n g th e
la s t m i le
The w idely accepted standard IEC 61850
defines the com plete com m unications
architecture for station and process bus
to ensure a high level of device interoper-
ability. The standards data m odels and
com m unication services are the key to
interoperability betw een m ulti-vendor
substation protection, control devices
(IED s), and station com puters (gatew ays)
via Ethernet. A substations secondary
system w ith station and bay level devices
com m unicating over the so-called sta-
tion bus has been w idely adopted by
utilities and vendors 2 .
The cyclic exchange of sam pled values,
ie, betw een N C IT and IED devices for
protection functions and other purposes
is also defined in the standard (part 9-2).
The interconnection betw een sensors,
actuators, protection and control devic-
es, is referred to as "process bus" (low er
part 3 ). This m eans that not only ana-
log data, but also status inform ation from
prim ary sw itchgear to IED s, as w ell as
com m and signals from IED s to the pri-
m ary sw itchgear can be exchanged. This
interconnection betw een sensors, actua-
tors, protection and control devices, is
referred to as the process bus(low er
part 2 ). A vendor-agreed subset under
the um brella of the utility com m unication
architecture (U C A ) foundation has been
in place since 2004. This subset speci-
fies the exchange of sam pled values and
is called IEC 61850-9-2LE (light edition).
Today, pilot projects utilizing the process
IEC 61850 also includes a new standard
for the com m unication betw een the high-
voltage apparatus and IED s, the so called
process bus using the 9-2 profile and
com m unications architecture. The pro-
cess bus has high requirem ents on band-
w idth since it w ill be used to transfer
continuous sam pled values from the pri-
m ary process.
O n the secondary equipm ent side the
m ost obvious physical change w ill be
from copper cables to fiber optic cables.
The m assive reduction of secondary ca-
bling w ill m ean reduced cost for cables
and associated equipm ent such as cable
trenches and installation m aterial. M an
hours for installation and testing on-site
w ill be reduced and m ore thorough test-
The w idely accept-
ed IEC 61850
standard defines
the com plete com -
m unications archi-
tecture for station
and process bus to
ensure a high level
of device interoper-
ability.
2 To p o lo g y o f s u b s ta ti o n s e c o n d a ry s y s te m s
IEC 61850
process bus
O perator
w orkplace
Engineering
w orkplace
C ontrol center
G atew ay
S w itch
IEC 61850
station bus
B ay
controller
B ay
controller
C onventional
sw itchgear
M odern
sw itchgear
M odern
C T / VTs
M odern
C T / VTs
IED A IED A IED B IED B
form ation and com m ands through the
process bus.
The location of the electronics depends
on a num ber of criteria. P rim ary appara-
tus w ith electronics integrated in the drive
cubicles is one possibility. O n the other
hand, it m ust be possible to handle cases
w here the prim ary equipm ent does not
yet contain com m unication interfaces.
H ere, system integrators need to m ount
the process electronics as near as pos-
sible to the prim ary equipm ent, eg, to lo-
cate them w ithin the m arshalling kiosks.
I n te ro p e ra b i li ty a n d a rc h i te c tu re o n
th e p ro c e s s b u s
Field experience w ith sensors has been
gathered for m ore than ten years now ,
m ostly in conjunction w ith protection and
control equipm ent from the sam e vendor.
For the process bus, utilities are execut-
ing an increasing num ber of pilot installa-
tions in order to gain experience. W ide-
spread com m ercial adoption has not yet
taken place.
B oth the com m unication architectures
(9-2, 9-2LE) and the steady-state behav-
ior of sensors are defined (IEC 60044).
The transient signal response of m erging
units has not yet been standardized. The
latter defines the extent (in term s of angle
and am plitude) to w hich a m erging unit
output signal is allow ed to differ from its
corresponding input signal. This is es-
sential since protection algorithm s and
the corresponding data acquisition hard-
w are and filtering has so far been inter-
connectedw ithin one device, the IED .
N ow those parts are split up into differ-
ent physical devices that can be supplied
from different vendors, and therefore a
transient signal response standard is es-
sential for correct functioning. A new ly
form ed w orking group w ith C igr (B 5.24)
is addressing signal interoperability and
results are expected during 2011.
P ro c e s s b u s c o m m u n i c a ti o n a rc h i te c tu re s
S everal different process bus architec-
tures exist. In fact, depending on factors
such as distance (location of M U s and
IED s), com m unication capabilities (single
port, m ultiple ports), available netw ork
bandw idth, availability considerations or
com m unication topologies, such as
point-to-point, star or ring configurations
the process bus architecture can vary
considerably. B oth utilities and vendors
bus for sam pled values are in operation
already and the execution of the first
com m ercial project for P ow erlink Q ueen-
slands Loganlea 275 kV substation is
w ell underw ay.
M odern substations, both new installa-
tions as w ell as the increasing num ber of
secondary retrofit or extensions installa-
tions w ill see both sensor and conven-
tional instrum ent transform er technolo-
gies side-by-side. The sam e applies for
handling signaling com m ands and posi-
tion indications to and from prim ary
sw itchgear.
R e a li z i n g th e p ro c e s s b u s
W ith the process bus, new devices such
as m erging units (M U ) for the optical sen-
sors, as w ell interface units for conven-
tional instrum ent transform ers, are need-
ed. In addition sw itchgear controllers for
circuit breakers and disconnectors
(B reaker IED s) w ill be introduced.
Those devices can be seen as conver-
sion endpointsto and from the prim ary
process to the secondary equipm ent.
A m erging unit, as the nam e im plies,
m erges various input signals into one
digital output signal, eg, three phase
sensors can have one com m on electron-
ic unit, w hich transform the optical sig-
nals from the sensors into digital sam pled
values and m ake them available on the
process bus.
A sw itchgear controller contains elec-
tronics for handling binary input and out-
put signals (signal and pow er contacts).
The device w ill com m unicate status in-
3 C o n tro l s y s te m a rc h i te c tu re a n d i ts li fe ti m e s
B oth new installa-
tions as w ell as the
increasing num ber
of secondary retro-
fit or extension
installations w ill
see both sensor
and conventional
instrum ent trans-
form er technolo-
gies side-by-side.
N e tw o rk c o n tro l c e n te r
O perator w orkplaces
S C A D A servers
Front-ends
L i fe -c y c le
6 -1 0 y e a rs
L i fe -c y c le
6 -2 0 y e a rs
L i fe -c y c le
7 -1 0 y e a rs
L i fe -c y c le
1 5 -2 5 y e a rs
L i fe -c y c le
3 0 -4 0 y e a rs
S u b s ta ti o n le v e l
S ubstation H S I
S ubstation gatew ay
B a y le v e l
S econdary equipm ent
P & C IED s
P ri m a ry e q u i p m e n t
S w itchgear
Transform ers
R e m o te c o m m u n i c a ti o n
C om m unication equipm ent
equipm ent such as cable trenches and
installation m aterial. Testing at site w ill be
very m uch reduced and m ore thorough
testing can be m ade at the factory. This
w ill lead to higher quality overall and a
reduced tim e at site.
C hanging to optical sensors (N C IT) w ill
increase personnel safety since there w ill
be no risk of injuries due to the inadver-
tent opening of current transform er sec-
ondary electrical circuits.
For retrofit, the possibility of installing the
new 9-2 process bus system in parallel
w ith the existing system w ill allow the
substation to rem ain in service during the
m ain part of the w ork. This w ill be a big
advantage, reducing outages to a m ini-
m um , during the retrofit process.
H a n s -E ri k O lo v s s o n
A B B S ubstations
Vsters, S w eden
hans-erik.olovsson@ se.abb.com
T h o m a s We rn e r
P e te r R i e tm a n n
thom as.w erner@ ch.abb.com
peter.rietm ann@ ch.abb.com
F o o tn o te
1 There are a num ber of solutions slightly different
in architecture etc. that w ill be com pliant w ith
IEC 61850.
system or S C A D A , allow s continuous
m onitoring of all connected secondary
equipm ent.
I n c re a s e d s y s te m a n d p e rs o n n e l s a fe ty
R em ote control com bined w ith authority
and rule-based access and rem ote test-
ing, allow s increased system safety and
security. P ersonnel safety is increased
since m ore tests can be done w ithout
putting the test personnel close to pri-
m ary equipm ent or w ithout the risk of
inadvertently opening current transform -
er (C T) circuits.
I n c re a s e d fu n c ti o n a li ty
Fully distributed system architecture
coupled w ith un-restricted com m unica-
tion and process capability enables the
system to add new functions easily w ith
zero or m inim al outage tim e, giving the
user additional benefit w ith respect to
safe and secure system operation.
B y deploying the IEC 61850 com pliant
solution
1
, interoperability w ith regard to
com m unications w ith other m anufactur-
ers equipm ent can be achieved. The
benefit to custom ers is that IED s from
different suppliers can be m ixed on the
sam e bus w ithout concern for com m uni-
cation incom patibilities.
P ro s p e c ts
The introduction of the IEC 61850-9-2
process bus standard in substations w ill
give the follow ing m ain advantages:
The footprint of prim ary sw itchgear can
be reduced since fiber optic sensors
(N C IT) can replace conventional m easur-
ing transform ers. This w ill be m ost pro-
nounced for air-insulated substations,
especially w hen using live tank C B s.
Traditional VTs are quite a heavy part of
G IS and by using new sensor technology
for voltage m easurem ent the equipm ent
can be m ade m uch lighter. Further, the
m anufacturing tim e can be reduced since
all adaptations of N C IT can be done w ith
softw are and their hardw are can be stan-
dardized leading to an overall shorter de-
livery tim e.
O n the secondary side the m assive re-
duction of secondary cabling by going
from a lot of copper cables to a few fiber
optic com m unication cables w ill m ean
reduced costs for cables and associated
are w orking on guidelines for reference
topologies for such architectures.
R e fu rb i s h m e n t a n d e x te n s i o n o f
e x i s ti n g S A s y s te m s
The typical life cycle of the prim ary and
secondary equipm ent of a substation is
illustrated in 3 . D uring the life tim e of
the prim ary equipm ent the entire sec-
ondary equipm ent or parts of the sec-
ondary equipm ent are replaced betw een
one to four tim es.
The m ost interesting and future prrof m i-
gration scenarios w ill be the ones in
w hich IEC 61850-based equipm ent is in-
troduced in steps to already installed
system s. There are tw o m ain driving fac-
tors for this: R etrofit and extension of
substations or of system functionality.
W ith the long life of prim ary equipm ent
com pared to secondary equipm ent,
there w ill be a continuous need for sec-
ondary equipm ent replacem ent, w hile
retaining the existing prim ary equip-
m ent.
B y introducing the process bus it w ill be
possible to m ake a very efficient retrofit
of protection and control system s w ith
m inim um outage. W hile keeping the sub-
station in service using the old equip-
m ent, the new IEC 61850-9-2-based
equipm ent can be installed and tested
using new fiber optic cables laid in paral-
lel to existing copper cables. A short out-
age is necessary to connect the new
protection and control equipm ent to the
existing prim ary equipm ent. W hen the
substation is taken into service again the
old protection and control equipm ent to-
gether w ith all copper cabling can be re-
m oved or can rem ain.
R e fu rb i s h m e n t d ri v e rs
There are different reasons for refurbish-
ing a substation or parts thereof. These
can depend on the starting point (eg,
w hether starting from a conventional re-
m ote term inal unit, R TU , solution or from
a proprietary num erical control system ).
A ll of the below drivers m ay be applicable
or only a selection of them .
I n c re a s e s y s te m a v a i la b i li ty
Exchanging of electrom echanical, static
or old fashioned digital secondary equip-
m ent w ith m odern num erical devices
bundled to a real-tim e com m unication
netw ork and connected to a higher level
system such as a substation autom ation
C ase studies
T h e g o a l o f I E C 6 1 8 5 0 is to fa c ilita te in te ro p e ra b ility o f
su b sta tio n d e vic e s wh ile sim p lifyin g e n g in e e rin g a n d
m a in te n a n c e . T h e e x a m p le s d e sc rib e d in th is se c tio n
p re se n t so m e o f th e sta n d a rd s su c c e sse s.
R etrofitting for the
future
I t is in e vita b le th a t a s su b sta tio n s
a g e , th e ir p a rts will n e e d to b e
re p la c e d . T h e 3 8 0 /2 2 0 k V a ir-in su la te d
su b sta tio n ( A I S ) lo c a te d in th e A lp s in
S ils, S witze rla n d wa s o n e su c h c a se .
I ts se c o n d a ry in fra stru c tu re ie ,
p ro te c tio n , c o n tro l a n d m e te rin g
a n d p a rts o f its p rim a ry e q u ip m e n t a t
th e 3 8 0 k V le ve l ie , switc h g e a r,
p o we r tra n sfo rm e rs a n d c irc u it
b re a k e rs h a d re a c h e d th e e n d o f
th e ir life c yc le s. T h e o p e ra to r K H R
( K ra ftwe rk e H in te rrh e in ) th u s tu rn e d
to A B B fo r a n e c o n o m ic a lly fe a sib le ,
sta n d a rd ize d a n d fo rwa rd -lo o k in g
so lu tio n fo r o n e o f th e m o st im p o rta n t
n o d e s o f th e S wiss tra n sm issio n
n e two rk . T h e a n swe r: a su b sta tio n
a u to m a tio n re tro t u sin g I E C 6 1 8 5 0
te c h n o lo g y.
Im plem enting the IEC 61850 standard
enables availability of all necessary
inform ation w hich supports exten-
sions, replacem ents or upgrades of all
or part of the substation autom ation
system and enables integration of
products from different suppliers. It
also ensures data consistency w ithin
the com plete system and defines the
engineering processes, helping to
keep data and data flow consistent for
the w hole substation. In this project,
the horizontal bay-to-bay com m unica-
tion m odel G O O S E w as used to
considerably reduce the copper w iring
betw een the bays. A ll inform ation for
interlocking betw een bays is now
exchanged betw een the A B B R elion

670 series IED s on the IEC 61850 bus
via G O O S E m essages.
Although testing w as a m ajor part of
the retro t, the greater challenge w as
to avoid a shutdow n during com m is-
sioning. O utage tim e of individual
feeders had to be m inim ized and
coordinated w ith the grid operator
m onths in advance. The com plete
system w as m anufactured and
delivered to the site w here, except for
the connection to the A IS interfaces, it
w as installed. O nce the dedicated bay
w as com m issioned, the new IED s w ere
connected to the prim ary equipm ent.
The substation w as con gured to
enable concurrent operation of the
existing and new equipm ent during this
transition phase.
A fter successfully retrofitting the
380 kV substation, the 220 kV part
w as integrated into the new control
system . The existing IED s w ere
equipped w ith a new IEC 61850
com m unication interface, allow ing
com m unication w ith the new M i-
croS C A D A control system and
ensuring that both the 380 kV and
220 kV sw itchyards could be operated
and m onitored from the central control
system . A hot standby system w as
put in place to provide backup should
a failure occur.
M a rc e l L e n z i n
m arcel.lenzin@ ch.abb.com
IEC 61850 at w ork
3 9 C a s e s tu d i e s
C hallenges build
partnerships
I n 2 0 0 6 , A B B su p p lie d a p io n e e rin g
su b sta tio n -a u to m a tio n p ro je c t to th e
B ra zilia n g o ve rn m e n t p o we r tra n s-
m issio n u tility, E le tro su l. T h is u tility
is re sp o n sib le fo r e le c tric a l tra n sm is-
sio n in th e so u th o f B ra zil. T h e p ro -
je c ts d e live re d we re b a se d o n th e
I E C 6 1 8 5 0 sta n d a rd , with a p p lic a tio n s
u sin g m e ssa g e s b e twe e n I E D s,
G O O S E
1
, re d u n d a n t c o n tro l u n its a n d
fe a tu rin g in te ro p e ra b ility b e twe e n
syste m s fro m d iffe re n t ve n d o rs.
The first project consisted of three
substations, A tlntida 2, G ravata
3and O srio 2. These are 230 kV
and 138 kV transm ission substations.
A tlntida 2uses 60 IED s (14 w ith
redundancy and 32 w ithout) for
protection, acquisition and control.
These are m apped to 13,683 dynam ic
objects from a total of 28,786 objects
available in the IED . A bout 3,300 of
these w ere distributed to centers of
higher hierarchy.
R e d u n d a n t c o n tro l
R edundant control w as one of the
special challenges of this project. This
philosophy, used by Eletrosul for m any
years, uses tw o control term inals (for
A B B s projects this m eant tw o
R EC 670s). These have exactly the
sam e functionality in term s of control
logic, interlocking and autom atism s
for controlling a certain num ber of
bays. B oth units are active, but just
one is m onitored by the supervisory
system . In case of unavailability of a
term inal, the S C A D A system sw itches
to the other IED .
B ased on this philosophy, Eletrosul
clearly defines how a system should
react, for exam ple, in contingency
situations. B riefly, the term inal
m anaged by the supervisory system is
m onitored and executes rem ote
com m ands. In case of interlocks, the
tw o redundant term inals send signals
to external bays. This affects the
philosophy of treatm ent of these
redundant signals by the receiving
logic.
In this project, G O O S E w as w idely
used both for m onitoring the active
term inal and for interlocks and
autom atic logics. This perm itted a
considerable saving of cables, as
tw ice as m any signals are generated
and received in this philosophy versus
a philosophy of sim ple control.
Eletrosul uses S A G E (an open-source
energy-m anagem ent system ) as
S C A D A softw are. S A G E w as devel-
oped by C EP EL, a B razilian govern-
m ent research center. The M M S
protocol defined in IEC 61850 w as
im plem ented in S A G E in 2006. The
A B B project w as thus a test of the
standards interoperability. This test
w as passed successfully.
R e s u lts
A nother request from Eletrosul w as to
m inim ize the num ber of hours required
for the preparation of texts in the
system database. For this, it encour-
aged the use of generic signs (G G IO s)
to be m inim ized. Even so, in the
control term inals that use m any
m onitoring aspects not defined in the
standard (m ostly com plex interlocks
and autom atic logic) the use of G G IO s
is still very high. It is hoped that as the
IEC 61850 standard evolves, m ore
standard signs w ill be provided. In IED
protection, it w as found that the use
of G G IO s w as reduced because of the
standard, and because A B B IED s use
standards for all protection functions.
The three substation projects fostered
a spirit of partnership betw een
Eletrosul and A B B , resulting in new
projects being carried out together
delivering the benefits of IEC 61850.
M a u r c i o P e re i ra
A B B P ow er S ystem s
G uarulhos, S o P aulo, B razil
m auricio.pereira@ br.abb.com
G o n z a lo H u m e re s F lo re s
Eletrosul
F o o tn o te
1 G O O S E: G eneric O bject O riented S ubstation
Event
P ortuguese
transm ission
substations
R E N is th e m a in P o rtu g u e se u tility fo r
e le c tric a l e n e rg y tra n sm issio n . A B B
su p p lie d th e u tility s rst I E C 6 1 8 5 0
syste m , in sta llin g it a t th e 4 0 0 /2 2 0 k V
L a g o a a su b sta tio n . T h e in sta lla tio n
is re sp o n sib le fo r so m e o f th e m o st
im p o rta n t in te rc o n n e c tio n p o in ts with
th e S p a n ish g rid o n th e 4 0 0 k V vo lta g e
le ve l.
O f all the benefits of m igrating
substation autom ation system s to the
new standard, the custom er w as
especially focused on one in particu-
lar: standardizing the system architec-
ture, ie, using the sam e netw ork
topology and overall arrangem ent
independently of the supplier.
A B B brought m uch experience into
this project that it had built up in
previous deliveries to the custom er.
The previous platform m ay have been
different, but m arked an excellent
starting point and perm itted A B B to
quickly identify the required solution.
The Lagoaa substation uses a system
based on a decentralized Ethernet ring.
The m ain products from A B B are:
M icroS C A D A P ro for local H M I, and
autom ated sequences
C O M 500i as G atew ay, for com m u-
nication w ith netw ork control center
IED 's 670 for control and protection
units
R EB 500 S ystem s for busbar
protection
Third party products used w ere:
S w itches and routers from
R U G G ED C O M
M einberg G P S servers for S N TP
tim e synchronization
C om puters w ith no-m oving parts
running W indow s XP Em bedded
platform
K VM sw itches and fallback sw itches
from B lack-B ox
Industrial com puters from A dvan-
tech, for rem ote access and
engineering stations.
R TU servers and local-event
printing system from S YC O M P
G erm any (R EN m andatory).
R em ote access via R X1000 routers
from R U G G ED C O M
The adoption of IEC 61850 w as
clearly beneficial. It allow s both
custom ers and vendors to retain
extensive functional freedom in their
definitions and philosophies. It also
assures independence from single
suppliers as w ell as cost savings in
both engineering and m aintenance.
C a rlo s C a e ta n o
P ao de A rcos, P ortugal
carlos.caetano@ pt.abb.com
W uskw atim
transm ission
system
I n o rd e r to stre n g th e n th e e x istin g
2 3 0 k V n e two rk , M a n ito b a H yd ro m a in
u tility in M a n ito b a c o n tra c te d with
A B B fo r th e d e sig n , e n g in e e rin g ,
su p p ly a n d c o m m issio n in g o f Wu sk -
wa tim Tra n sm issio n S yste m C o m p le x ,
c o m p risin g th re e n e w sta tio n s a n d
e x p a n sio n o f fo u r e x istin g o n e s. T h e
n e w sta tio n s fe a tu re d d istrib u te d
c o n tro l, b a y p ro te c tio n a n d a b a y
c o n tro lle r c o n c e p t. T h e e n tire c o n tro l
a n d c o m m u n ic a tio n p ro c e ss u se d th e
I E C 6 1 8 5 0 sta n d a rd .
P rotection devices w ere sourced from
three different m anufacturers. In fact
the use of different suppliers w as a
requirem ent of the protection redun-
dancy concept. P rior to IEC 61850
such integration w ould have been
challenging if not im possible, espe-
cially for large system s due to incon-
sistency of data and engineering.
The IEC 61850 engineering approach
and data structure using S C L language
signi cantly facilitated the engineering
of interfaces betw een different units.
The descriptive pow er of the SC L
language enabled part of the integra-
tion to occur w ithout having access to
all devices or bay level inform ation.

B ecause design, m anufacturing and
testing of the tw o SA system s w as
com pleted in close colaboration
betw een AB B and M anitoba H ydro, an
attuned and future-proof system w as
delivered. The IEC 61850 standard
m ade it possible to com bine and inte -
grate AB B , Siem ens and Areva Protec-
tion IED s w ithin the SA and thus to ful ll
safety requirem ents. The use of G O O SE
m essages for bay-to-bay interlocking
and intertrip reduced the am ount of
copper w iring required. The com plete
com m unication of the substations are
now described and docum ented in
SC D - les, w hich is of advantage for the
future m aintenance and extension of
the stations that are now in service.
M a n s o u r J a la li
B urlington, C anada
m ansour.j.jalali@ ca.abb.com
4 1 C a s e s tu d i e s
The S tar of
Laufenburg shines
T h e 3 8 0 k V L a u fe n b u rg su b sta tio n
o n e o f th e la rg e st a n d m o st im p o rta n t
in E u ro p e b o o sts se ve ra l wo rld
p re m ie re s. S ta yin g a b re a st o f th e
d e ve lo p m e n t a n d e x te n sio n o f
I E C 6 1 8 5 0 , its o wn e rs, th e S wiss
u tility E G L A G , we re th e rst to e q u ip
a h ig h -vo lta g e su b sta tio n with a n
I E C 6 1 8 5 0 a u to m a tio n syste m , d o in g
so sh o rtly a fte r th e re le a se o f th e
sta n d a rd in 2 0 0 4 , a n d e ve n o p tin g fo r
a m u lti-ve n d o r so lu tio n . Two ye a rs o n ,
th e u tility issu e d th e ve ry rst o p e n
te n d e r b a se d o n a S C D ( su b sta tio n
c o n g u ra tio n d e sc rip tio n ) le , a n d
m o st re c e n tly im p le m e n te d th e
9 -2 p ro c e ss b u s.
W hen built in 1967 at the inception
of the European grid, the Laufenburg
substation, w ith its key position in
term s of interconnection and m eter-
ing, w as dubbed the S tar of Laufen-
burg. It w as extended and upgraded
from 1979 to 1981. From 2004 to
2009, EG L undertook the follow ing
refurbishm ent w ork:
S tep 1: retrofit of prim ary and
secondary equipm ent
S tep 2: replacem ent of old station
H M I
S tep 3: pilot project for
IEC 61850-9-2
S te p 1 : B a y re tro fi t
B oth prim ary and secondary equip-
m ent of the 17 feeders w as replaced
in a bay-by-bay m anner, w arranting an
alm ost interruption-free retrofit. The
m igration w as supported by a com -
pact hybrid solution that connects the
new gas-insulated sw itchgear (G IS )
m odules to the existing air-insulated
sw itchgear (A IS ) busbar using silicon
bushings. The G IS m odules com pris-
ing circuit breaker, disconnector,
earthing sw itch and instrum ent
transform ers w ere pre-tested to
enable short installation tim es. They
offer m axim um operational safety and
high im m unity to environm ental
conditions. They also require less
space and sim plify m aintenance as
replacem ent of a com plete pole can
be perform ed in less than 24 hours.
The future-proof secondary retrofit
concept addressed the varying
lifecycles of bay and station-level
equipm ent. W ith the latter equipm ent
being retained, A B B integrated its new
IEC 61850 com pliant bay control and
protection IED s (Intelligent Electronic
D evices) to the third-party control
system using a gatew ay converting
IEC 61850 to IEC 60870-5-101. A B B
also successfully integrated a third-
party m ain protection device w ith an
IEC 61850 interface. C onsistency of
bay data during the stepw ise upgrade
w as supported by pre-configuring and
pre-testing using an S C L-based tool.
S te p 2 : S ta ti o n -le v e l re p la c e m e n t
In 2007, A B B w on an open tender for
the replacem ent of the old station
H M I (hum an-m achine-interface). A B B
installed a new IEC 61850 H M I fully
re-using the engineering data from the
S C D file generated for the bay retrofit.
S te p 3 : I n tro d u c ti o n o f p ro c e s s b u s
The pilot installation contains a
selection of products and system s
ready for the IEC 61850 process bus.
O n the prim ary side, there is a
com bined and fully redundant C P -3
current and voltage sensor w ith
m erging units for protection and
m etering. O n the secondary side, a
R EL670 line distance protection IED
and a R EB 500 busbar protection
system w ith three bay units are in
operation. M etering is perform ed by
an L+G energy m eter. For supervision
and easy access, a S A S using
IEC 61850 station bus com pletes
the pilot installation.
The pilot is running in parallel to the
conventional control and protection
system and enables collection of long-
term real-life experience as w ell as
com parison of behavior. S ince its
com m issioning in 2009, the system
has been in continuous operation.
P e tra R e i n h a rd t
A B B S ubstations
petra.reinhardt@ ch.abb.com
S te fa n M e i e r
stefan.m eier@ ch.abb.com
W hen tw o
becom e one
J O H A N H A N S S O N , S T E F A N B O L L M E YE R T h e su c c e ssfu l
in tro d u c tio n o f th e I E C 6 1 8 5 0 sta n d a rd so m e six ye a rs a g o
h a s a lre a d y b ro u g h t h u g e b e n e ts to p o we r d istrib u tio n a n d
su b sta tio n a u to m a tio n in te rm s o f sc a la b ility, in te ro p e ra b ility,
sa fe ty a n d d a ta m a n a g e m e n t. E ve n th o u g h it wa s d ra fte d b y
su b sta tio n a u to m a tio n d o m a in e x p e rts, it is b y n o m e a n s
e x c lu sive ly re se rve d fo r th a t d o m a in a lo n e . I n fa c t, I E C 6 1 8 5 0
is m o re th a n c a p a b le o f o p e ra tin g in o th e r a re a s, su c h a s in
p ro c e ss a n d p o we r g e n e ra tio n p la n t a u to m a tio n . T h e se
p la n ts a re c o n tro lle d a n d m o n ito re d fro m a c e n tra l c o n tro l
ro o m in wh ic h th e re a re typ ic a lly two d iffe re n t syste m s
d e p lo ye d ; o n e fo r p ro c e ss c o n tro l a n d th e o th e r fo r m o n ito r-
in g a n d c o n tro llin g th e e le c tric a l syste m . P la n t o p e ra to rs, in
th e ir q u e st to re d u c e c o m p le x ity a n d o p tim ize e f c ie n c y h a ve
b e e n a c tive ly se e k in g so lu tio n s th a t o ve rc o m e th e se p a ra tio n
o f th e syste m s a n d th e e x tra c o sts a sso c ia te d with it.
IEC 61850 in com bination w ith A B B s aw ard-w inning
Extended A utom ation S ystem 800xA is opening doors
to new and cost-effective solutions.
4 3 Wh e n tw o b e c o m e o n e
Even though it w as
drafted by substa-
tion autom ation
dom ain experts,
the IEC 61850
standard is capa-
ble of operating in
process and pow er
generation plant
autom ation.
trol system , IED m onitoring and control is
usually im plem ented by a separate sub-
station autom ation (S A ) system w hile
connectivity betw een the electrical sys-
tem and process control is lim ited to the
m ost essential data, eg, for interlocking
purposes. A lthough only a lim ited set of
signals is selected for data exchange, to-
days practice for this type of electrical
and control system interfacing, such as
hardw iring or M odbus connectivity, still
requires significant hardw are and engi-
neering efforts. The presence of tw o dif-
ferent system s also increases costs be-
cause, for exam ple, different spare parts
and a duplicated effort to ensure integra-
tion w ith enterprise level system s are re-
quired 1 .
To help plant operators overcom e these
expensive com plexities, IEC 61850, w ith
its standardized com m unication proto-
cols and data m odel, in com bination w ith
A B B s aw ard-w inning Extended A utom a-
tion S ystem 800xA is opening doors to
new and cost-effective solutions.
T
he integration of field instru-
m ents into process control ap-
plications is based on a lim ited
set of industry standards that
provide harm onized access to process
data and diagnostics. For electrical
equipm ent, how ever, a m ultitude of dif-
ferent, often proprietary com m unication
protocols is deployed. Therefore electri-
cal system s, especially those com posed
of equipm ent from different vendors, are
often characterized by m ultiple different
interfaces, a broad variety of engineering
tools, protocol converters and gate-
w ays.
P rocess control system s typically do not
offer built-in support for those com m uni-
cation protocols and data m odels. A nd
because of this significant engineering
and adaptation efforts need to be m ade
on a project-by-project basis to m ake
the increasing am ount of inform ation,
w hich m odern intelligent electronic de-
vices (IED s) provide, available to a m oni-
toring and control system . N ow adays to
m itigate the im pact on the process con-
I E C 6 1 8 5 0 i n te g ra ti o n i n S y s te m 8 0 0 x A
The com bination of A B B s Extend-
ed A uto m ation S ystem 800xA w ith
IEC 61850 not only addresses the above-
m entioned end-user dem ands, but it also
gives greater synergy and flexibility to
fully integrated plant operations.
Introduced in D ecem ber 2003, S ystem
800xA provides a scalable solution that
extends traditional process control by in-
corporating: safety; discrete logic and
sequence control; production m anage-
m ent; inform ation m anagem ent; sm art
instrum entation; asset m anagem ent; and
docum ent m anagem ent. B ased on A s-
pect O bject technology, S ystem 800xA
is capable of adopting data m odels from
different disciplines and m aking them
available in a harm onized w ay through a
singular virtual database environm ent.
The integration of IEC 61850 into S ystem
800xA supports both generic object ori-
ented substation events (G O O S E) and
m anufacturing m essage specification
(M M S ) protocol options described in the
zation w orkflow s can be harm onized
once IED data is available in S ystem
800xA , allow ing instrum ent m aintenance
engineers and those servicing electrical
devices to w ork from the system s com -
m on m aintenance w orkplace. S ystem
800xAs m aintenance structure gives an
overview of all plant assets in a single dis-
play. C onditions can be m onitored, and
diagnostics and m aintenance related
alarm s for electrical devices and process
instrum ents are presented in practically
the sam e fashion. For further in-depth
analysis, additional IED data points can
be subscribed to or disturbance records
can be uploaded. A ccess-right settings
ensure that only authorized people are al-
low ed to perform such detailed analysis.
A s the ultim ate step, S ystem 800xAs A s-
set O ptim ization functionality can be in-
tegrated w ith a com puterized m ainte-
nance m anagem ent system (C M M S ) so
that w ork order handling is autom atically
treated the sam e for both electrical and
process equipm ent. This elim inates the
need for separate w orking procedures or
the adaption of different system s to the
C M M S .
The possibility of electrical integration
presented by A B B s S ystem 800xA in
com bination w ith IEC 61850 has been
keenly observed by industries other than
pow er distribution. The O il & G as and
P ow er G eneration industries in particular
have been evaluating these new oppor-
tunities and som e have even taken the
first steps tow ard the im plem entation of
such a system .
tion configuration file to create all data
item s for vertical integration as w ell as
the connections for horizontal com m uni-
cation. S eparate gatew ay configuration
or additional project-specific softw are in-
terfaces becom e obsolete.
To be m ore specific, S ystem 800xA
seam lessly integrates IEC 61850, deliv-
ering the features and benefits requested
by end users, such as:
R educed cost of ow nership through
few er com ponents and spare parts,
and less system adm inistration.
G reater flexibility as integration is
m uch less com plicated than before
and the interfaces adapt easier to
changes.
C entralized data recording, including
the plant-w ide sequence of events
and a harm onized interface to
enterprise level system s.
A com plete view of electrical system
data, especially to process operators
so they can m ake educated decisions.
Im proved operator effectiveness w ith
one user interface that can consis-
tently present plant-w ide data, enable
data access and display operating
procedures.
B ecause of its flexibility, S ystem 800xA
allow s the configuration of individual
w orkplaces for both electrical and pro-
cess operators so that they can retain the
graphical displays and w orkflow s fam iliar
to them w hile operating in a single envi-
ronm ent. M aintenance and asset optim i-
standard. G O O S E com m unication is di-
rectly connected to the A C 800M con-
troller (one of m any from the S ystem
800xA fam ily of controllers) via a com -
m unication interface so that the data be-
com es available in the controller applica-
tion. This so-called horizontal integration
1

enables the A C 800M controller to com -
m unicate w ith all other IED s on the sam e
IEC 61850 netw ork in real tim e 2 .
M oreover, the A C 800M controller acts
like an IED on the IEC 61850 netw ork,
and can therefore be involved in load
shedding or other pow er m anagem ent
applications.
M M S com m unication is used for the ver-
tical integration of IEC 61850. Via an
O P C
2
interface, S ystem 800xA has di-
rect access to all IED data such as cur-
rent and voltage m easurem ents, status,
interlocking, tim e-stam ped alarm s and
events. The system can also send open
and close com m ands to IED s. Logical
nodes (LN s) of IED s are m odeled as A s-
pect O bjects in S ystem 800xA and there-
fore all system features, such as freely
configurable graphics, faceplates, alarm s
and event lists, and historian capabilities
are available for IED data.
To engineer IEC 61850 integration, S ys-
tem 800xA uses the inform ation con-
tained in the substation configuration
description (S C D ) file, w hich describes
the com plete substation configuration.
S ystem 800xA processes the extensible
m arkup language (XM L) based substa-
The Flsj facility
is one of the rst
hydro pow er plants
to utilize a com bi-
nation of IEC 61850
and System 800xA
for process and
substation auto-
m ation.
P ro c e s s
i n s tru m e n ta ti o n
P ro c e s s
e le c tri fi c a ti o n
S u b s ta ti o n
a u to m a ti o n
P o w e r
m a n a g e m e n t
P ro c e s s a u to m a ti o n P o w e r a u to m a ti o n
1 T ra d i ti o n a l p ro c e s s c o n tro l s y s te m s d o n o t o ffe r b u i lt-i n s u p p o rt fo r p ro p ri e ta ry
c o m m u n i c a ti o n p ro to c o ls a n d d a ta m o d e ls
S ystem servers
O perator
w orkplace for
process autom ation
O perator
w orkplace for
pow er autom ation
S ystem netw orks
C ontrollers
Instrum ents
Fieldbuses
LV S w itchgear
D rives
M otor
controllers
S C A D A S erver
S ystem netw orks
G atew ay/
P rotocol converter
P rotection
& C ontrol
IED s
H ardw ired
S erial buses
P rotocol 1 P rotocol 3
P rotocol 2
4 5 Wh e n tw o b e c o m e o n e
For substation autom ation, the IED s are
the m ost critical devices in the plant in
that they provide protection, control and
m onitoring of generators and lines from
the outgoing high-voltage substation.
Three native IEC 61850 com pliant A B B
R elion
IED s are integrated w ith S ystem

800xA, tw o redundant R EG 670 IED s are
used for generator protection and one
R EL670 for protection of the outgoing
130 kV line. A ll the IED s are integrated
w ith the A C 800M controller using
IEC 61850-de ned G O O S E. This enables
the AC 800M controllerto function not
only as the process controller, but also to
act as an IED on the IEC 61850 netw ork,
com m unicating horizontally w ith all other
IED s as w ell as w ith the control center via
satellite com m unication. Im portant data
from the IED s include m easurem ents such
as pow er, reactive pow er, voltages and
currents, together w ith breaker and dis-
connector statuses 4 . This data is dis-
played at the local S ystem 800xA opera-
tor w orkplace and the control center in
Sundsvall som e 260 km aw ay from w here
the system is usually m onitored and con-
trolled 5 . In addition, alarm s and events
from the com bined process and substa-
tion autom ation system are also transm it-
ted to S undsvall, providing operators w ith
valuable inform ation about the plant. A t
the control center, the operators m onitor
and control the plant using an A B B N et-
w ork M anagem ent System . They also
have rem ote access to the S ystem 800xA
operator w orkplace, providing a redun-
dant connection to the control system .
E . O N i n te g ra te s s u b s ta ti o n a n d
p ro c e s s a u to m a ti o n
E.O N Vattenkraft, a subsidiary of E.O N
S verige, is the third largest hydroelectric
pow er producer in S w eden. In a typical
year it produces about 8 TW h from 77
hydro pow er plants, from K ristianstad in
the south to Lycksele in the north. M ost
of these plants w ere built betw een the
1950s and 1970s using w hat is now con-
sidered legacy technology. U p to 2015,
E.O N plans to invest S EK 6 billion ($763
m illion) in safety, renew al and productivity
im provem ents in installed pow er plants.
A ll of E.O N 's hydro pow er plants are usu-
ally operated rem otely from the central
control center in S undsvall, and are visit-
ed only for m aintenance reasons.
O ne of these, the Flsj hydro pow er
plant, w as the rst upstream plant installed
on the river Ljungan in northern Sw e-
den 3 . Since 2009, it holds the distinc-
tion of being one of the rst hydro pow er
plants in the w orld to utilize a com bination
of IEC 61850 and System 800xA for both
process and substation autom ation.
In the installation at Flsj, the original
relay-based system w as replaced by one
S ystem 800xA together w ith an A C 800M
controller. P rocess control handles appli-
cations such as turbine control, vibration
protection and synchronization. P rocess
electrification and control of auxiliaries
and pum ps are done using P rofibus
com m unication w ith A B B s m odular low -
voltage sw itchgear M N S .
3 T h e F l s j h y d ro p o w e r p la n t
U pstream , Flsj is the first of E.O N s
hydropow er plants on the 350-kilom eter long
river Ljungan. The Ljungan runs to the
northeast of H elagsfjllet and flow s into the
G ulf of B othnia just south of S undsvall. The
pow er plant w as built in 1975 and has a
m axim um w aterfall of 46 m eters and a flow
through the turbine of 60 m
3
per second. The
Flsj plant produces about 73 G W h w ith an
installed capacity of 24 M W . The plant is
unm anned, and controlled and m onitored
from E.O N Vattenkrafts control center in
S undsvall. C om m unications betw een the
pow er plant in Flsj and the control center
in S undsvall is via satellite transm ission.
The use of
IEC 61850 w ith
a single control
system provided
E.O N w ith the
m eans to investi-
gate the benefits
of using the stan-
dard for standard-
ized system inte-
gration, application
building, installa-
tion and testing.
2 C o m m u n i c a ti o n w i th a ll o th e r I E D s o n th e s a m e I E C 6 1 8 5 0 n e tw o rk i s p o s s i b le
i n re a l ti m e
LV S w itchgear
D rives
M otor controllers
Fieldbuses
H orizontal integration
S ystem netw orks
A C 800M
controller
Vertical
integration
IEC 61850
P rotection &
C ontrol IED s
S ystem servers
Instrum ents
P ro c e s s
i n s tru m e n ta ti o n
P ro c e s s
e le c tri fi c a ti o n
S u b s ta ti o n
a u to m a ti o n
P o w e r
m a n a g e m e n t
I n te g ra te d p ro c e s s a n d p o w e r a u to m a ti o n
C om m on operator w orkplace for
process and pow er autom ation
w hen so m any pow er plants are con-
trolled from one location, its very im por-
tant that there is a standard on w hich
everything is based.
From an E.O N point of view , there are
m any benefits of using IEC 61850 and
S ystem 800xA :
C om plete system configuration is
m ore efficient and safer because
standardized solutions for IED
configuration, substation autom aton
design and control system program -
m ing are used.
The testing of protection, control and
m onitoring functions can be carried
out before installation begins, and this
helps to m inim ize the dow ntim e
needed for installation and com m is-
sioning.
IEC 61850 is standard for Ethernet-
based com m unication solutions and
that m eans reduced w iring, w hich in
turn leads to shorter installation tim e
and reduced sources of errors during
operations.
W ith im proved access to electrical
and process data from the entire
plant, the focus is shifted from
troubleshooting to m ore preventive
m aintenance. The system itself can
indicate w hen a com ponent needs
servicing or replacing.
A com m on event list for both the
process and electrical m onitoring
m akes it easier to m onitor errors and
draft m aintenance plans.
These benefits are such that according
to A ssar S vensson, E.O N w ill continue to
ask for IEC 61850 in its specifications:
M a i n b e n e fi ts
The use of IEC 61850 w ith a single con-
trol system in the Flsj hydro pow er
plant w as a pilot installation for E.O N . It
provided the m eans from w hich the com -
pany could investigate the benefits of us-
ing the renow ned global standard for
substation autom ation not only as a
com m unication protocol for devices, but
also for standardized system integration,
application building, installation and test-
ing. The success of this pilot project is
very im portant to E.O N because it w ill in-
fluence the upgrade of the substation
and process control system s in other
hydro pow er plants.
A ssar S vensson w orked on technology
assessm ent and plant design for the
pow er plant in Flsj and is now involved
in the m ajority of E.O N Vattenkrafts up-
grades and m odernizations 6 . O f the
renew al plans for the hydropow er plants,
he says, this is an extensive conversion
job w e have ahead of us. W ere therefore
looking for standardized solutions in ac-
cordance w ith IEC 61850. Thus far, it
only concerns relay protection.For
E.O N , IEC 61850 w ill provide new op-
portunities to increase availability and
sim plify engineering. S everal standard-
ized com ponents provide the capability
to build plants in a m ore structured m an-
ner. W e w ant to be able to receive deliv-
eries in w hich all com ponents can be
tested together prior to initiating opera-
tions.A nother im portant reason for a
m ore standardized structure for the con-
trol system s is that all E.O N Vattenkraft
facilities in S w eden are controlled from a
single control center. S vensson says that
6 A s s a r S v e n s s o n is in v o lv e d in m a n y o f E . O N
Va tte n k ra ft s u p g ra d e s a n d m o d e rn i z a ti o n s
4 I E D d a ta i n c lu d e p o w e r, re a c ti v e p o w e r, v o lta g e a n d c u rre n t
m e a s u re m e n ts
5 T h e c o n tro l c e n te r i n S u n d s v a ll fro m w h i c h a ll o f E . O N s
h y d ro p o w e r p la n ts i n S w e d e n a re c o n tro lle d a n d m o n i to re d
I now have m ajor expectations regarding
our suppliers ability to give us additional
capabilities to standardize and sim plify
construction of electrical and control
system s for hydropow er plants. W ith the
installation in Flsj, w e have hopefully
just opened the door to the future.
J o h a n H a n s s o n
A B B A B
Vsters, S w eden
johan.hansson@ se.abb.com
S te fa n B o llm e y e r
A B B A utom ation G m bH
M inden, G erm any
stefan.bollm eyer@ de.abb.com
F o o tn o te s
1 H orizontal integration can also replace the
hardw iring traditionally used for interlocking
signals.
2 O bject linking and em bedding (O LE) for process
control
4 7 I E C 6 1 8 5 0 E d i ti o n 2
K L A U S -P E T E R B R A N D , WO L F G A N G WI M M E R T h e n a l p a rt o f I E C 6 1 8 5 0 E d itio n 1 C o m m u n ic a -
tio n N e two rk s a n d S yste m s in S u b sta tio n A u to m a tio n [1 ] wa s p u b lish e d in J u n e 2 0 0 5 . A m o n g
th e sta n d a rd s g re a te st a c h ie ve m e n ts a n d b e n e ts a re th e u se o f sta n d a rd ize d se m a n tic s a n d
a fo rm a l syste m d e sc rip tio n ( th e la tte r b e in g th e k e y to e f c ie n t e n g in e e rin g o f su b sta tio n
a u to m a tio n syste m s) a s we ll a s it b e in g e m b e d d e d in to th e b ro a d e r sc o p e o f p o we r-syste m
m a n a g e m e n t. S in c e its in tro d u c tio n , I E C 6 1 8 5 0 h a s e sta b lish e d itse lf a s g lo b a l sta n d a rd fo r
su b sta tio n a u to m a tio n . A n e x a m p le fro m S witze rla n d is th e syste m in sta lle d in S ils 1 [2 ].
T h is is, h o we ve r, fa r fro m th e c o n c lu sio n o f its d e ve lo p m e n t. A d d itio n a l a p p lic a tio n a re a s a re
b e in g c o n sid e re d b y I E C . T h e sta n d a rd is th u s b e in g e x te n d e d .
From substation autom ation to pow er utility autom ation
IEC 61850
Edition 2
These extensions do not only concern
the application-data m odel itself, but
also the capabilities of the S C L (substa-
tion configuration language) to support
new data m odels and enhanced engi-
neering processes.
R e m a i n i n g c h a lle n g e s fro m E d i ti o n 1
61850-9-2 defines the standardized
com m unication of current and voltage
sam ples across an Ethernet-based serial
link. B esides transm itting such analog
sam ples, the link also transm its sw itch
positions, com m ands and protection
trips. A ccording to IEC 61850-8-1, this
com bination results in a com plete pro-
cess bus betw een prim ary and second-
ary equipm ent 3 .

The response tim e and throughput re-
quirem ents on this bus are determ ined
m ainly by the sam ples. The advantages
of such a process bus are:
It perm its the replacem ent of m any
copper cables by a few optical cables
(low er cabling costs)
O ptical cables achieve the galvanic
decoupling of prim ary and secondary
equipm ent (m akes m aintenance and
replacem ent easier).
The serial interface m akes the applica-
tions independent of the physical
principle of the instrum ent transform er
(electrom agnetic, capacitive, optical,
others) allow ing m ore flexibility on the
prim ary equipm ent side.
Edition 1 of the standard did not define a
solution for the tim e synchronization re-
quired for the com m unication of sam ples
at rates in the region of m icroseconds.
Therefore, and to achieve the accep-
tance of a faster process bus, the user
organization, U C A International [11], de-
veloped an application recom m endation
know n as IEC 61850-9-2LE (Light Edi-
tion). This recom m endation is based on
the concept of a m erging unit (M U ) that
delivers all current and voltage sam ples
changes. In m any cases, only a
subset of them is needed.
The basic substation-autom ation
related data m odel has to be extend-
ed only by additional logical node
classes needed for functions from
these other dom ains.
The com m unication stack used is very
com m on (especially TC P /IP and
Ethernet).
T h e s ta n d a rd e x te n d s b e y o n d th e
s w i tc h y a rd
There is a signi cant advantage for utili-
ties if data from substation IED s can be
used directly on higher system levels for
control and m onitoring purposes, w ithout
there being a need for protocol converters
or having to handle num erous different
protocols. Therefore tw o w orking groups
of IEC TC 57 have looked at the use of
IEC 61850 for real-tim e applications such
as line protection and also other applica-
tions that involve com m unication betw een
substations as w ell as m onitoring and
control applications involving com m uni-
cation betw een substations and netw ork
control centers. The results w ill be pub-
lished as technical reports.
The report that handles com m unication
betw een substations is published as
IEC TR 61850 90 1 [8]. Its results are
being integrated into the second edition
of the base standard. B esides discuss-
ing direct tunneling of Ethernet-level
m essages on high-bandw idth links, it
also looks at the usage of proxy gate-
w ays w ith low -bandw idth links 2 .
The report handling com m unications
betw een substations and netw ork con-
trol centers w ill be published as IEC
TR 61850-90-2 [9] and any resulting add-
ons to the base standard w ill be integrat-
ed into an am end-
m ent to Edition 2,
or at the latest in
Edition 3 of the
base standard.
W ork on a third re-
port handling the
autom ated trans-
form ation and m ap-
ping betw een the
IEC 61850 data
m odel and the IEC 61970 C om m on
Inform ation M odel (C IM , [10]) has just
begun.
T
he developm ent of the
IEC 61850 standard is con-
tinuing. This w ork is prim arily
aim ed at rem edying various
shortcom ings that w ere identified during
the first installations, but it also seeks to
enhance its application range as is re-
flected in its changed title C om m unica-
tion N etw orks and S ystem s for P ow er
U tilities[3]. This w ork is resulting in Edi-
tion 2 of the standard, w hich is being
published in 15 parts during 2010.
E x p a n d i n g i n to n e w a p p li c a ti o n a re a s
IEC 61850 w as originally defined exclu-
sively for substation autom ation system s
(including protection applications). It has
since been extended to other application
areas. These are autom ation of w ind
pow er system s [4], hydro pow er system s
[5], and distributed energy resources
such as com bined heat and pow er sys-
tem s or photovoltaic plants [6]. The fact
that the standard is being applied in the
dom ain of distributed energy resources
indicates the significance of IEC 61850
for sm art grids.
A spects of the extension of IEC 61850 to
these dom ains include the follow ing:
The services of IEC 61850 have been
proven to fulfill the know n require-
m ents of these other dom ains and
m ay hence be applied w ithout
IEC 61850 w as originally
defined exclusively for substa-
tion autom ation system s, but
has since been extended to
other application areas.
4 9 I E C 6 1 8 5 0 E d i ti o n 2
the conventional current transform er of
type TP Y for protection. This allow s the
type testing of the com bined set of N C IT
and M U . This has been done success-
fully for A B B s N C IT C P, (com bined cur-
rent and voltage sensors for G IS ) w hich
are now ready for use.

S om e questions rem ain unresolved, es-
pecially how the signal from a conven-
tional transform er (C IT) is changed due
to digitalization in the M U . These ques-
tions are addressed by the IEC TC 38 (In-
strum ent Transform ers) that has started
replacing IEC 60444 by new standard
IEC 61869 [14] in a step by step m anner.
It w ill define in its part 9 the digital inter-
facecovering the w hole issue of M U s.
The result w ill not be available in tim e to
be referenced in Edition 2 of IEC 61850.
S everal m anufacturers are already offer-
ing M U s as pilot products. H ow ever, the
electronic interface to a sw itch (often
called a breaker IED or B IED ) is rare even
as a pilot product. S om etim es norm al
controllers are used in a sim ilar w ay to
B IED s, eg, by receiving G O O S E (G eneric
O bject O riented S ubstation Event) trips
from protection devices. This can for ex-
from a given bay in a tim e-synchronized
m anner. It defines a telegram form at
containing voltages and currents from
the three phases and the zero com po-
nents. It specifies tw o sam ple rates (80
and 256 sam ples per period) and a tim e
synchronization by a pulse per second
(1 pps) w ith a synchronization accuracy
class of T4 ( 4 s). M eanw hile, a profile
of the standard IEEE 1588 [12] is being
w orked on, w hich w ill support high-pre-
cision tim e synchronization across
sw itch-based Ethernet.
The num erous features and benefits that
the process bus offers are considered in
a discussion on optim al processes in
connection w ith com m unication archi-
tecture. The interoperable application
has been delayed, how ever, because the
dynam ic behavior (step and frequency
response) of the sam ples has not been
sufficiently defined to guarantee applica-
tion-level interoperability. The behavior of
conventional instrum ent transform ers is
defined in the standard IEC 60044 [13] as
is the behavior of electronic current and
voltage transform ers, thus sum m arizing
all N C ITs. It is stated, eg, that the elec-
tronic current transform er behaves as
M ore com ponents
w ill facilitate the
adoption of the
architecture of the
S A system and
perm it the better
physical distribu-
tion of the prim ary
equipm ent, provid-
ing the full advan-
tage of the process
bus.
1 I E C 6 1 8 5 0 b a s e d s u b s ta ti o n a u to m a ti o n s y s te m i n S i ls . T h i s i m p le m e n ta ti o n i s a ls o d i s c u s s e d o n p a g e 3 8 .
Engineering w orkstation S tation H M I R em ote control
G P S
R edundant
gatew ays
B ackup
(N A S )
S tation
server
Ethernet sw itch R S G 2100
B ay side
Transform er 1
Transform er 2
R EC 670
M W U
380 kV B B P 380 kV line 1 380 kV coupler 380 kV transform er 2 380 kV line 2 380 kV transform er 1
M W U M W U M W U D S A S -R TU
R EC 670 R EC 670 R EC 670 R EC 670 7S A 612 7S A 612 7S A 612 7S A 612 7S A 612
R EL670 R EL670 R EL670 R EL670 R EL670
S IM EA S R S IM EA S R S IM EA S R S IM EA S R S IM EA S R
R EB 500 B U R EB 500 B U R EB 500 B U R EB 500 B U R EB 500 B U
B C M 800 B C M 800 B C M 800 B C M 800 B C M 800
L+G ZM Q L+G ZM Q L+G ZM Q L+G ZM Q L+G ZM Q
B B P /B FP
central unit
R EB 500
verified that the Edition 1 devices used
already im plem ent resolutions of all tech-
nical problem s identified up to Edition 2.
This can be done by m eans of the so
called TIC S docum ent, w hich should be
available from the m anufacturer for each
certified IED type.
B e y o n d E d i ti o n 2
IEC standards are being developed in a
tim e-consum ing procedure involving
com m enting and voting by the national
com m ittees in several steps and via dif-
ferent drafts as they w ork tow ards the
final international standard (IS ). There-
fore, som e task forces have already
started w ork on topics for am endm ents
or for a future Edition 3, w hich w ill fulfill
further user requirem ents. S om e of the
topics being considered are:
Ethernet netw ork architectures w ithin
substations including redundancy and
Ethernet sw itch configuration.
A setup for the supervision and diagno-
sis of prim ary equipm ent, called C M D
(condition m onitoring and diagnosis).
To provide an overview of the standards
fast-grow ing data m odel for both present
and future application dom ains, and to
be able to realize extensions m ore quick-
ly than is possible in the norm al stan-
dardization process, the introduction of
an IEC database for m odel definitions is
under discussion. This w ould be acces-
sible via Internet. A standardized form al
description of the m odel definitions de-
fined in Edition 2 w ill help w ith the rapid
integration of new m odels into the tools.
I E C 6 1 8 5 0 a n d S m a rt G ri d s
The discussion around the future of the
pow er grid w ith m ore and m ore decen-
tralized pow er generation, flexible pow er
buying and high grid reliability often labels
this objective as sm art grid. A n as-
am ple be used for the tw o affected
breakers of a 1 breaker sw itchyard di-
am eter, or for breaker failure protection.
There are also ideas to com bine a M U
and a B IED into one product. H ow ever,
this is not a m atter for IEC 61850 but for
the optim ized application of the process
bus. The benefits of process bus appli-
cations can already be reaped today.
M ore com ponents w ill facilitate the adop-
tion of the architecture of the S A system
and perm it the better physical distribu-
tion of the prim ary equipm ent, providing
the full advantage of the process bus.
I E C 6 1 8 5 0 E d i ti o n 2
B esides the correction of errors and
m any sm all details, Edition 2 w ill contain
the add-ons laid out in 5 .
It is planned to publish all parts of Edition
2 w ith the exception of 7-5xy as an inter-
national standard during the course of
2010. The question of w hen correspond-
ing tools and products w ill appear on the
m arket depends on the m anufacturers
and appropriate requirem ents from cus-
tom ers and is difficult to predict. A ll error
corrections, clarifications and restrictions
contained in Edition 2 w ith respect to
Edition 1, how ever, should already be
follow ed by the next releases of Edition 1
devices. In this context it should also be
m entioned that it is possible to use Edi-
tion 2 engineering and S C L descriptions
w ith IED s still having an Edition 1 data
m odel. Edition 2 and all follow ing edi-
tions w ill be backw ards com patible to
Edition 1 (w ith the exception of error cor-
rections). A custom er or supplier today
deciding to apply IEC 61850 Edition 1
w ill thus benefit from all present advan-
tages and future benefits of this stan-
dard. To assure as m uch com patibility to
future editions as possible, it should be
3 P ro c e s s b u s w i th m e rg i n g u n i t ( M U ) , s w i tc h i n te rfa c e ( B I E D ) a n d
e x te rn a l E th e rn e t s w i tc h
Fiber optical
S tation bus
C urrents (I)
Voltages (U )
Fiber optical
P rocess bus
P rotection trip
S econdary equipm ent P rim ary equipm ent
I E D
P rotection
Trip decision
M U
M erging U nit
B I E D
B reaker
Interface
2 C o m m u n i c a ti o n p ri n c i p le s b e tw e e n s u b s ta ti o n s b a s e d o n
I E C 6 1 8 5 0
Function
A 1
Function
A 2
S tation A
P roxy
B 2
Function
A 1
Function
B 2
S tation B
S pecial
C om m unication
M echanism
(typically low
bandw idth)
Teleprotection Equipm ent
acting as G atew ay
IEC 61850-90-1
It is possible to
use Edition 2 engi-
neering and S C L
descriptions w ith
IED s still having an
Edition 1 data
m odel.
5 1 I E C 6 1 8 5 0 E d i ti o n 2
[9] IEC /TR 61850-90-2, C om m unication netw orks
and system s for pow er utility autom ation P art
90-2: U se of IEC 61850 for the com m unication
betw een substation and netw ork control
center, in w ork
[10] IEC 61970-301, Energy m anagem ent system
application program interface (EM S -A P I) P art
301: C om m on Inform ation M odel (C IM ) B ase,
2003-11
[11] IEC 61850-9-2LE (Light edition) Im plem enta-
tion G uideline for D igital Interface to Instrum ent
Transform ers using IEC 61850-9-2, U C A
International U sers G roup, w w w .ucainterna-
tional.org
[12] IEEE 1588, P recision C lock S ynchronization
P rotocol for N etw orked M easurem ent and
C ontrol S ystem s
[13] IEC 60444 Instrum ent transform ers
[14] IEC 61869, Instrum ent transform ers P art 1:
G eneral requirem ents, 2007-10 (others parts in
w ork)
[15] Electric P ow er R esearch Institute (EP R I),
R eport to N IS T on the S m art G rid Interoper-
ability S tandards R oadm ap, June 17, 2009
(w w w .nist.gov/sm artgrid )

R e fe re n c e s
[1] IEC 61850 (Ed 1), C om m unication N etw orks
and S ystem s in S ubstations, 14 P arts,
2003-2005, http://w w w .iec.ch.
[2] B rand, K .P, R einhardt, P, 2008, Experience
w ith IEC 61850 based S ubstation A utom ation
S ystem s, P raxis P rofiline IEC 61850, 66-71
[3] IEC 61850 Ed 2, C om m unication N etw orks
and S ystem s for P ow er U tility A utom ation,
scheduled for 2010, http://w w w .iec.ch
[4] IEC 61400-25-x, W ind turbines P art 25-1:
C om m unications for m onitoring and control of
w ind pow er plants, 2006-12
[5] IEC 61850-7-410, C om m unication netw orks
7-410: H ydroelectric pow er plants C om m uni-
cation for m onitoring and control, 2007-08
[6] IEC 61850-7-420, C om m unication netw orks
7 420: B asic com m unication structure D istri-
buted energy resources logical nodes, 2009-03
[7] S w iss C hapter of IEEE P ES , H ydro P ow er
W orkshop I (H andeck, 2008) und W orkshop II
(G enf, 2009), http://pes.ieee.ch
[8] IEC /TR 61850-90-1, C om m unication
netw orks and system s for pow er utility
autom ation P art 90-1: U se of IEC 61850 for
the com m unication betw een substations, to
be published sum m er 2009
sum ed prerequisite to the functioning of
such a grid is that m ore inform ation can
be m ade available in a reliable and tim ely
m anner to m ore and m ore distributed ap-
plications and users, perm itting control to
be optim ized. This w ill assure the grids
stability, m ake electrical energy available
w here needed, and perm it interactive
com m unication w ith consum ers. This re-
quires the needed data to be m ade avail-
able w ithin a com m on inform ation net-
w ork and according to standardized data
sem antics. This is precisely w here IEC
61850 fits in. Therefore IEC 61850 has
been taken up alongside IEC 61970 in a
sm art-grid related report from EP R I [15]
and adopted by N IS T as a key interest.
5 a E x a m p le fo r s ta ti s ti c a l m e th o d s ( C lc M th ) a p p li e d o n M M X U
5 I E C 6 1 8 5 0 E d i ti o n 2
M M X U 1
TotW Total A ctive P ow er
TotVA r Total R eactive
P ow er
TotVA Total A pparent
P ow er
TotP F Average P ow er
Factor
P P V P hase to phase
Voltages
V P hase to ground
Voltages
A P hase C urrents
.......................................
TotW Total A ctive P ow er
TotVA r Total R eactive
P ow er
TotVA Total A pparent
P ow er
TotP F Average P ow er
Factor
P P V P hase to phase
Voltages
V P hase to ground
Voltages
A P hase C urrents
.......................................
P R ES
TR U E_R M S
P EA K _FU N D A M EN TA L
R M S _FU N D A M EN TA L
M IN
M A X
AVG
S D V
P R ED IC TIO N
R ATE
......
M M X U 2 C lc M th
5 b M a n a g e m e n t h i e ra rc h y fo r lo g i c a l d e v i c e s
I E D 1
G rR e f = I E D 1 . O c p . L L N 0
O c p
LLN O
O c p G n d O c p P h s
P TO C 1 P TO C 1
R D IR 1 R D IR 1
LLN O LLN O
B esides the correction of errors and m any sm all details, Edition 2 of
IEC 61850 w ill contain the follow ing add-ons:
C la ri fi c a ti o n s o f u n c le a r p a rts such as:
buffered reporting
m ode sw itch (test m ode)
control access hierarchy (local / rem ote)
D a ta m o d e l a n d S C L e x te n s i o n s fo r c o m m u n i c a ti o n b e tw e e n
s u b s ta ti o n s : discussed above and outlined in 2
S u p p o rt fo r re d u n d a n t I E D i n te rfa c e s : discussed in "S eam less
redundancyon pages 57-61 of this ABB Review S pecial R eport.
D a ta m o d e l e x te n s i o n s fo r n e w a p p li c a ti o n fu n c ti o n s : supervision of
non electrical quantities, etc. (These new logical nodes have been m ainly
introduced by other application dom ains such as hydro-pow er plants)
S ta ti s ti c a l e v a lu a ti o n s o f m e a s u re m e n ts a s c o n ta i n e d i n th e lo g i c a l
n o d e s M M X U a n d M M X N : Triggered by pow er-quality discussions and
other application dom ains such as w ind pow er 5 a .
S u p p o rt fo r tra c k i n g a n d lo g g i n g o f s e rv i c e s a n d s e rv i c e re s p o n s e s :
This feature m akes service param eters and service handling visible
w ithout the use of protocol analyzers by the standards existing reporting
and logging facilities and allow s, eg, the logging of negative answ ers on
service requests (negative acknow ledgem ents). This feature is useful both
for com m issioning and security supervision.
M a n a g e m e n t h i e ra rc h i e s o f lo g i c a l d e v i c e s : Especially com plex
m ultifunctional protection IED s require m ore functional levels for the
m anagem ent of com m on param eters. For an exam ple see 5 b : The
logical device O cp controls the m ode of the low er level logical devices
O pcP hs and O pcG nd by group reference (G rR ef) w hich additionally could
be controlled individually.
N e w d a ta o b je c ts a n d c o n c e p ts fo r te s ti n g o f fu n c ti o n p a rts i n th e
ru n n i n g s y s te m : This feature allow s now a standardized application of
the test and test-blocked m ode w hich w as already introduced in Edition
1 and is now clarified in Edition 2. It supports the handling of test
m essages in parallel to the real m essages.
S C L e x te n s i o n s to d e s c ri b e n e w I E D p ro p e rti e s a n d b e tte r s u p p o rt
o f e n g i n e e ri n g p ro c e s s e s a n d re tro fi t: The data exchange betw een
different projects in a controlled w ay allow s coordinated engineering in
parallel running subprojects.
S C L i m p le m e n ta ti o n c o n fo rm a n c e s ta te m e n t ( S I C S ) : stating
m andatory and optional features of IED tools and system tools. This
feature allow s judging the degree of interoperability betw een different
engineering tools, system tools as w ell as IED tools.
A n i n fo rm a ti v e p a rt 7 -5 x w i th e x a m p le s o f m o d e li n g i m p o rta n t
a p p li c a ti o n fu n c ti o n s i n th e s y s te m : This part is intended to support
com m on understanding of m odeling and to m ove tow ards broadly
accepted m odeling solutions
5 3 R e li a b le n e tw o rk i n g
K L A U S -P E T E R B R A N D , WO L F G A N G
WI M M E R T h e c o m m u n i c a ti o n s ta n -
d a rd I E C 6 1 8 5 0 w a s i n tro d u c e d to
s ta n d a rd i z e th e c o m m u n i c a ti o n fo r
s u b s ta ti o n a u to m a ti o n s o th a t a ll
d e v i c e s , n o m a tte r th e i r o ri g i n , c o u ld
c o m m u n i c a te u s i n g a s ta n d a rd
p ro to c o l re p la c i n g w i re s w i th s e ri a l
c o m m u n i c a ti o n . B a s e d o n m a i n s tre a m
c o m m u n i c a ti o n te c h n o lo g y, li k e th a t
o f th e E th e rn e t, I E C 6 1 8 5 0 b e n e ts
fro m a h i g h d e g re e o f e x i b i li ty w i th
re g a rd to c o m m u n i c a ti o n a rc h i te c tu re .
A n y s o lu ti o n , h o w e v e r, h a s to fu l ll
s tri n g e n t re li a b i li ty re q u i re m e n ts to
e n s u re a c o n s ta n t p o w e r s u p p ly i n
tra n s m i s s i o n a n d d i s tri b u ti o n g ri d s to
a c c o m p li s h th e s a fe ty -c ri ti c a l m i s s i o n
o f s u b s ta ti o n a u to m a ti o n . M a i n s tre a m
E th e rn e t c o n n e c ti o n s d o n o t n e c e s -
s a ri ly p ro v i d e th e re q u i re d re li a b i li ty.
T h e I E C 6 1 8 5 0 re a c h e s th e re q u i re d
le v e l o f c o m m u n i c a ti o n re li a b i li ty fo r
s u b s ta ti o n a u to m a ti o n b y c o n g u ri n g
a p p ro p ri a te m e s s a g e lte ri n g a n d
c h e c k i n g th e lo a d fo r w o rs t c a s e
a p p li c a ti o n s c e n a ri o s fo r ti m e c ri ti c a l
c o m m u n i c a ti o n tra f c .
Im pact of m odern com m unication
technology on system reliability
R eliable
netw orking
include the m axim um allow ed response
tim e for an action. Ethernet w as origi-
nally designed to be tolerant of failures,
but not to guarantee response tim es.
Therefore for this purpose special rules
m ust be applied so that the Ethernet can
be used for tim e critical application func-
tions.
F a i lu re m o d e s a n d s e rv i c e s
A failure m eans that som e com ponent in
the S A system is not w orking as intend-
ed, w hich im pacts the functionality of the
S A system . Failures can be perm anent or
tem porary. Failures produce errors in the
intended system functionality. The result
of a perm anent failure m ay be the loss of
pow er supply, loss of processing elec-
tronics, or loss of com m unication ports,
like failing diodes for fiber optic links.
These kinds of errors can be accom m o-
dated by appropriate redundancy strate-
gies as discussed in the context of com -
m unication in the previous article (see
"S eam less redundancy" on page 57 of
this issue of the ABB Review S pecial
R eport).
O ften, especially in the context of com -
m unication, tem porary errors can occur
as a result of electrom agnetic distur-
bances or the interm ittent failure of com -
ponents. These m ay be caused by tem -
perature fluctuations, the distortion of
S
ubstation autom ation (S A ) is
com m only used to control,
protect and m onitor substa-
tions [1]. U p to now , the com -
m unication for S A has used proprietary
serial com m unication system s com ple-
m ented by conventional parallel copper
w iring, especially from the bay level
to the sw itchgear. W ith the advent of
IEC 61850 [2], a com prehensive global
standard for all com m unication needs in
the substation is available.
The reliability of S A com m unication ar-
chitectures is of great im portance for the
reliability of the pow er supply from the
pow er transm ission and distribution grid.
U p until now a dedicated com m unica-
tion system has been used, how ever the
IEC 61850 uses a standard m ainstream
com m unication m eans like Ethernet,
w hich provides a high degree of flexibili-
ty, but does it bring reliability?
R eliability according to IEC 60870-4 [3] is
defined as a m easure of the equipm ent
or a system to perform its intended func-
tion, under specified conditions, for a
specified period of tim e. O ften investiga-
tions concentrate on reliability w ith re-
gard to hardw are faults. In the case of
tim e-critical functions, like protection or
load shedding based on serial com m uni-
cation, the specified conditionsalso
the delay, w hich for a 1,000 B yte (8 kB it)
m essage and 100 M B it / s Ethernet,
equates to about 100 s. This is typically
m uch m ore than the routing tim e w ithin a
sw itch. A ssum ing a ring w ith 20 sw itch-
es, for exam ple, an additional delay of
2 m s can occur betw een sender and
receiver.
IP -based traffic norm ally has a deter-
m ined destination. Thus a sw itch can
learn to route a corresponding Ethernet
m essage to a particular port, as show n
in 2 . The disadvantage of this point to
point traffic is that the sender has to send
separate m essages to each intended re-
ceiver. For real-tim e m essages there is
often m ore than one receiver of the sam e
m essage. The interlocking function, for
exam ple, needs the state (sw itch posi-
tions) of the bus coupler at all bay con-
trollers of all bays at the sam e voltage
level. Therefore, the G O O S E and S V ser-
vices use Ethernet-level m ulticast ad-
dresses. These configurable, hardw are-
independent link level addresses also
m ake m aintenance easier. A s a sw itch
does not know w here the receivers of
m ulticast m essages are, it typically for-
w ards the m essages to all devices con-
nected to it, thus producing a lot of pos-
sibly unw anted load for the receivers.
C onsidering the interlocking function for
30 bays, w here each bay sends the state
of its busbar related prim ary sw itches to
all other bays in the sam e voltage level
w ith a background period of 1 s, this re-
sults in a background load of 30 m es-
sages per second. This load is needed at
the controllers, how ever not at the pro-
tection devices, w hich instead m ight
need other G O O S E m essages eg, for the
breaker failure function.
To separate w anted load from unw anted
load, Ethernet sw itches support the con-
cept of m ulticast m essage filtering. This
can be based on m ulticast addresses as
The G O O S E service is m eant for fast
sending of process state changes
(events). Therefore, to overcom e tem po-
rary errors on single m essages, the m es-
sage is repeated in case a value in the
G O O S E m essage changes a few tim es
very quickly (eg, w ithin 4 m s intervals).
A fter this, a fall back to the periodic
background period occurs in the order of
a second (see The concept of IEC 61850
on page 7 of this issue of the ABB Re-
view S pecial R eport). The tim e span be-
tw een three or four fast sendings is a
configuration param eter, w hich typically
depends on the m axim um tolerable delay.
These services can be used for protec-
tion and other safety related functions [4].
E th e rn e t s p e c i fi c c h a lle n g e s
Ethernet w as originally developed as a
bus system , in w hich several devices are
coupled to a com m on com m unication
m edium . This m echanism leads to colli-
sions if tw o devices
try to send data at
the sam e tim e 1 .
D ue to such colli-
sions, the response
tim es during burst
situations are un-
predictable, and the
m axim um through-
put is less than 10
to 20 percent of the
raw bit rate of the
bus. This is over-
com e by using Ethernet sw itches w ith
duplex connections betw een them and
to the end devices.
S w itches w ork w ith a store-and-for-
w ardprinciple like IP level routers 2 .
They receive a m essage com pletely, and
then forw ard it to the know n output port,
thereby avoiding m essage collisions
com pletely by prioritizing m essages
w ithin the sw itches. The disadvantage of
sw itched Ethernet is, that each hop from
one respective sw itch to another adds to
optical cables that have been bent too
m uch or sim ilar, leading to tem porarily
disturbed or m issed m essages in the
com m unication system . These kinds of
failures are typically detected by high-
level protocols like transm ission control
protocol (TC P ), and are handled by tell-
ing the sender about a m issed m essage
and then repeating its dispatch. For this
reason all IEC 61850-based com m unica-
tions, w hich are not tim e critical, are built
on the TC P protocol. To allow additional
routing in arbitrary com m unication net-
w orks, TC P runs on top of the Internet
netw orking protocol (IP ).
U nfortunately, the handling of m essage
errors through repetition results in further
m essage delays. The detection of a failed
m essage and its repeated dispatch in
TC P is based on an acknow ledgem ent
m echanism w ith tim eouts that m ay lead
to delays in the order of seconds. H ow -
ever, the acceptable m axim um delay for
a tim e critical application function is in
the order of 10 m s to 100 m s. TC P -
based services, therefore, are not suit-
able for m any autom ation and protection
functions. For this reason IEC 61850 in-
troduces the G O O S E (generic object ori-
ented system event) and S V (sam pled
value) services for functions needing
real-tim e perform ance. B oth services are
directly m apped onto the Ethernet link
layer. B oth periodically send sequentially
num bered m essages, w hich allow a re-
ceiver to detect m issing m essages as
w ell as perm anent failures. S am pled val-
ues are transm itted w ith a high rate cor-
responding to the sam pling rate of cur-
rents and voltages, eg, 80 m essages per
cycle being 4,000 m essages / s for a
50 H z system , thus replacing a m issed
sam ple by the next one very quickly. It is
up to the receiving application to handle
single lost values, eg, by interpolating
the received w ell-know n ones already
from any A /D conversion.
The reliability of S A com m uni-
cation architectures is of great
im portance for the reliability
of the pow er supply from
the pow er transm ission and
distribution grid.
1 C o lli s i o n o n a b u s w i th h u b s
collision
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are lost due to insufficient buffer
space.
These challenges can be tackled w ith
appropriate tools. The IEC 61850 data
flow allow s the intended destinations for
all kinds of m essages to be described,
thus defining the required data flow at
the application level. A n exam ple for
G O O S E (green) and TC P based (blue)
data flow is show n in 3 . The load situa-
tion based on the presum ed data flow
can be determ ined easily at each receiv-
er in norm al and burst situations 4 .
C om paring this w ith the input capacity of
the devices gives a quick check as to
w hether the intended function distribu-
tion and data flow at application level is
reasonable and w ill w ork from a com m u-
nication point of view .
The boxes in 3 represent intelligent
electronic devices (IED s), w hose nam es
are w ritten in the first line, and w hich all
com m unicate w ithin the S ubN etw ork
P 2W A 1 (third line in each box). The IED s
P 2K A 1, P 2K A 2, P 2K A 3 and P 2K A 4 are
controllers sending G O O S E m essages
for interlocking to each other. The IED
P 2FA 1 is a protection device, w hich
sends a trip w ith G O O S E to the control-
ler P 2K A 1 to trigger a disturbance re-
corder. The IED P 2Y1 is a gatew ay to a
netw ork control center, w hich receives
reports from all other devices.
4 show s the load calculated from a
substation configuration language (S C L)
description of this system for all receiv-
ers based on the configured data flow .
This results in the required load for a
sw itch netw ork that is correctly config-
ured. If the allow ed m essage input rate
to an application IED is know n, it can be
checked if the application w ould really
w ork. 5 now contains the calculated
load based on the configured virtual local
area netw ork (VLA N ) identifications. B y
com parison w ith 4 it can be easily seen
that this configuration using m ainly VLA N
000, ie, no VLA N , leads to a suboptim al
situation. Even the gatew ay P 2Y1, w hich
should only receive reports and does not
belong to any VLA N , is loaded w ith
G O O S E m essages, and the protection
device P 2FA 1, w hich should receive
nothing, gets 3 G O O S E m essages / s.
For this sm all system the resulting load,
even during a burst, is no problem at all.
H ow ever, for a bigger system a better
VLA N configuration should be used to
To a certain extent this can be handled
by the Ethernet priority feature. TC P -
based tim e uncritical traffic has no prior-
ity and can also be delayed by appropri-
ate configuration at the sender by 50 to
200 m s. G O O S E and S V traffic gets pri-
ority in the sw itches and is put first into
the output m essage queues. Thus it is
not delayed by TC P traffic, just by other
G O O S E and S V m essages.
To sum up:
The IEC 61850 usage of sw itched
Ethernet for tim e critical applications
can guarantee m axim um response
tim es dow n to a few m illiseconds.
To reach this perform ance and also to
restrict unw anted load on the end
devices, the Ethernet m ust be built
w ith duplex connections to and
betw een m anaged sw itches, ie,
sw itches supporting priorities and
VLA N or m ulticast address-based
filtering.
It is necessary to configure priorities,
VLA N ID s and m ulticast addresses at
the G O O S E and S V sources as w ell
as appropriate m essage filtering at
the sw itches for the intended high-
perform ance m ulticast data flow .
S o lu ti o n s to re m a i n i n g p ro b le m s
Tw o m ain challenges rem ain:
C onfiguring VLA N or M ulticast filtering
into the sw itches
A ssuring that for big system s the
m axim um delay in the sw itch netw ork
fits w ithin the required m axim um
response tim e, and that no m essages
w ell as on the introduction of virtual LA N s
(VLA N ). Therefore, IEC 61850 introduces
a separately configurable m ulticast ad-
dress as w ell as a separate VLA N identi-
fication for each G O O S E or S V m essage
source. This leads to additional engineer-
ing effort to identify the flow of m ulticast
m essages from the source to all intended
destinations through the sw itch netw ork
and to configure the concerned sw itches
accordingly.
A nother challenge, w ith the store-and-
forw ard principle of sw itches, is the re-
lated interm ediate buffering (storing) of
m essages in case of bursts. In such a
situation, a lot of m essages from differ-
ent input ports arrive at a sw itch, w hich
typically has to be forw arded through a
single output port eg, to the station level.
If the inputs of 10 ports are routed to one
output port w ith the sam e bit rate, then
nine m essages have to be buffered in
betw een. This leads to additional m es-
sage delays, and in extrem e cases m ay
result also in m essage losses due to in-
sufficient buffer capacity.

It should be kept in m ind that the reliabil-
ity of G O O S E m essages depends on the
prerequisite that not m ore than tw o con-
secutive m essages are lost. This prereq-
uisite has been validated by a lot of tests
based on physical disturbance scenari-
os. H ow ever, if in a busbar trip situation,
G O O S E m essages are lost in the sw itch-
es due to insufficient buffer size, delayed
G O O S E-based actions m ay result.
G O O S E traffic
TC P traffic
This bottleneck can be easily found by
just analyzing the receiver load for nor-
m al data flow based on the S C D file 4 .
This kind of analysis is recom m ended for
a system w ithout process bus, if it han-
dles m ore than 30 bays. The trend to put
m ore and m ore devices to 100 M B it / s
Ethernet w ill m ake this analysis m ore and
m ore urgent, since it is the receiving end
devices that have the bottlenecks and
not the com m unication system itself.
To conclude, netw orking can be highly re-
liable for substations and utility autom a-
tion is possible using m odern m ain stream
com m unication technology, such as Eth-
ernet, in accordance w ith IEC 61850.
R e fe re n c e s
[1] B rand, K .P., Lohm ann, V., W im m er, W . (2003)
S ubstation A utom ation H andbook, U A C .
IS B N 3-85759-951-5. R etrieved June 6 2010
from w w w .uac.ch
[2] IEC 61850 (2002 2005) C om m unication
netw orks and system s in substations. R etrieved
June 6, 2010 from w w w .iec.ch
[3] IEC 60870-4 (1990) Telecontrol equipm ent and
system s; P art 4 P erform ance requirem ents.
R etrieved June 6, 2010 from w w w .iec.ch
[4] B rand, K .P., O stertag, M ., W im m er, W . (2003)
S afety related distributed functions in
S ubstations and IEC 61850. IEEE B P T B ologna,
P aper 660
[5] IEC 61850-6Ed2 (2009) C om m unication
netw orks and system s for pow er utility
autom ation P art 6: C onfiguration description
language for com m unication in electrical
substations related to IED s. R etrieved June 6,
2010 from http://electronics.ihs.com
delays in w orst case situations. The m ain
problem here is to know w hat are the
w orst case situations seen from the pro-
cess point of view , and how do they
m anifest them selves in m essage load for
the devices hosting application func-
tions. O ne typical scenario is a busbar
trip, resulting in a change of all m easure-
m ents and the tripping of all circuit break-
ers w ithin a very short tim e span, w ith
the addition of 10 alarm s from the sw itch-
yard or protection system . O ther scenar-
ios depend on the sw itch yard configura-
tion and its place in the pow er netw ork
and m ust be defined by the utilities. If
these scenarios and the resulting m es-
sage load are know n, the system de-
scription as IEC 61850 S C L file allow s for
a tool to determ ine the resulting m es-
sages and their flow to the end devices
as illustrated above. W ith a description
of the physical structure, the flow through
the sw itch netw ork m ay be calculated
also; this includes the required m axim um
buffer size to ensure that no m essage is
lost, as w ell as the m axim um delay in the
output queues. This allow s the m axim um
G O O S E and S V m essage delay to be de-
term ined in advance, and the buffer size
of the sw itches to be check against their
required size. If this is not consistent,
then redesigning the com m unication ar-
chitecture m ight be a solution. M ore buf-
fer space in the sw itches m ight be re-
quired, or in the w orst case the application
im plem entation itself m ay need to be
changed to reduce the com m unication
load required.
H ow ever, these kinds of problem s only
arise in very big system s or system s
w here S V m essages are used betw een
several bays. It is com m on today in big
system s w ithout process bus and only a
few G O O S E-based functions to find bot-
tle necks typically at the station level de-
vices, m ay be at the hum an m achine in-
terface (H M I), or m ay be at the gatew ay.
get closer to the m inim um m essage rate
needed for the application level engi-
neering as show n 4 .
In a ring netw ork, the filtering configura-
tion at the sw itches can be derived from
the logical data flow . To avoid filter recon-
figuration in case of sw itch ring reconfig-
uration, the filtering should only be con-
figured for the receiving devices or
betw een different rings, w hile all ports
betw een sw itches should allow all used
VLA N s. The filter to the receiving devices
can be autom atically calculated together
w ith the receiver load. A s an exam ple 5
contains the VLA N identifications, w hich
should be configured at the sw itches to
be sent to the port w here the correspond-
ing device is connected. A s VLA N 000
just m eans ignore the VLA N and send
everyw here, here the only thing to be
configured is the VLA N 001 as output to
the device P 2K A 4. In a sim ilar w ay a re-
lated configuration for filtering based on
m ulticast addressing can be generated.
For tree netw orks a sim ilar strategy
could be used. H ow ever, if w ithin the tree
netw ork appropriate filtering is also
needed, an additional form al description
of the physical netw ork, as defined in
IEC 61850-6 Ed2 [5], also perm its the
sw itch filter configuration to be autom at-
ically derived from the logical data flow .
Finally the configuration data m ust be
m anually loaded into the sw itches (differ-
ently per sw itch m anufacturer). This
should change in the future, since IEC
TC 57 W G 10 is w orking on a standard-
ized sw itch configuration description in
S C L, w hich should then be used as input
to sw itch engineering tools.
The form al description of the physical
structure also supports handling of the
last problem : probable m essage loss due
to insufficient buffer size and additional
4 E x p e c te d lo a d a t re c e i v e rs d u e to c o n fi g u re d d a ta flo w
R eceived load per IED based on client allocation
IED nam e kB it/s M sgs/s B urst m sgs
P 2K A 1 11 2 6
P 2K A 4 16 2 9
P 2K A 2 10 1 3
P 2K A 3 10 1 3
P 2Y1 5 5 25
5 A c tu a l lo a d i n n o rm a l s i tu a ti o n d u e to c o n fi g u re d VL A N s
R eceived S V/G O O S E load per IED due to VLA N config, and VLA N list
IED nam e kB it/s M sgs/s B urst m sgs VLA N ID s
P 2K A 1 12 2 9 000
P 2K A 4 17 2 12 001 000
P 2K A 2 21 3 9 000
P 2K A 3 22 3 12 000
P 2FA 1 21 3 9
P 2Y1 22 3 12
5 7 S e a m le s s re d u n d a n c y
H U B E R T K I R R M A N N T h e I E C 6 1 8 5 0 sta n d a rd h a s b e c o m e th e
b a c k b o n e o f su b sta tio n a u to m a tio n , a llo win g fo r th e rst tim e
in te ro p e ra tio n b e twe e n p ro te c tio n , m e a su re m e n t a n d c o n tro l
d e vic e s fro m d iffe re n t m a n u fa c tu re rs o n th e sa m e E th e rn e t
lo c a l a re a n e two rk , sta tio n o r p ro c e ss b u s. T h is n e two rk is
d u p lic a te d in su b sta tio n s th a t re q u ire a ve ry h ig h a va ila b ility.
I n te ro p e ra b ility re q u ire s th a t a ll d e vic e s u se th e sa m e re d u n -
d a n c y c o n c e p t. I E C 6 1 8 5 0 n o w sp e c i e s a n e two rk re d u n d a n -
c y th a t fu l lls th e re q u ire m e n ts o f su b sta tio n a u to m a tio n , fo r
th e sta tio n b u s a s we ll a s fo r th e p ro c e ss b u s. I t is b a se d o n
two c o m p le m e n ta ry p ro to c o ls d e n e d in th e I E C 6 2 4 3 9 -3
sta n d a rd : p a ra lle l re d u n d a n c y p ro to c o l ( P R P ) a n d h ig h -a va il-
a b ility se a m le ss re d u n d a n c y ( H S R ) p ro to c o l. B o th a re a b le to
o ve rc o m e th e fa ilu re o f a lin k o r switc h with ze ro switc h o ve r
tim e , wh ile a llo win g c lo c k syn c h ro n iza tio n a c c o rd in g to I E E E
1 5 8 8 to o p e ra te re lia b ly. D e ve lo p e d b y A B B in c o lla b o ra tio n
with o th e r c o m p a n ie s, b o th P R P a n d H S R will b e p a rt o f th e
se c o n d e d itio n o f th e I E C 6 1 8 5 0 sta n d a rd .
B um pless Ethernet redundancy
for substations w ith IEC 61850
S eam less
redundancy
physical Ethernet netw ork could carry
both the station and the process bus
traffic.
For the station bus, the netw ork topology
generally adopted in large substations is
that each voltage level uses a ring of
sw itches, w hich connect the m ain pro-
tection, backup protection and control
IED s 1 . In sm aller m edium -voltage
substations, a cost-effective arrange-
m ent uses IED s that include a sw itch ele-
m ent, w hich can be chained into a ring
topology, m aking the netw ork resilient to
the loss of one link 2 .
In large substations, the different voltage
level rings are connected to the station
level in a tree form ation, allow ing the sta-
tion bus to exhibit a m ixed ring and tree
topology. A lternatively, a ring of rings for-
m ation can also be used.
At the process bus level, IED s are typically
sim ple m easurem ent and control devices
connected to the protection and control
all transm itted inform ation and provide
zero-sw itchover tim e if links or sw itches
fail, thus fulfilling all the difficult real-tim e
requirem ents of substation autom ation.
P R P (IEC 62439-3 C lause 4) specifies
that each device is connected in parallel
to tw o local area netw orks of sim ilar to-
pology. H S R (IEC 62439-3 C lause 5) ap-
plies the P R P principle to rings and to
rings of rings to achieve cost-effective
redundancy. To this effect, each device
incorporates a sw itch elem ent that for-
w ards fram es from port to port.
I E C 6 1 8 5 0 n e tw o rk to p o lo g y
IEC 61850 encom passes tw o busses
based on sw itched Ethernet technology
[4]:
The station bus [5] interconnects all
bays and the station supervisory level;
it m ainly carries control inform ation,
such as m easurem ents, interlocking
and select-before-operate. Typically
the m anufacturing m essaging specifi-
cation (M M S ) protocol is used to
transfer data betw een station level
and bay level intelligent electronic
devices (IED s) w hile generic object
oriented substation events (G O O S E)
looks after bay IED to bay IED data
transfer.
The process bus [6] interconnects the
IED s w ithin a bay and m ainly carries
m easurem ents, know n as sam pled
values (S V), for protection. The S V are
sam pled at a nom inal value of 4 kH z
in 50 H z grids (4.8 kH z in 60 H z
grids).
IEC 61850 does not prescribe a topolo-
gy, tree, star or ring. Indeed, the sam e
T
he IEC 61850 standard re-
places the num erous busses
and links in use today by a hi-
erarchy of w ell specified
sw itched Ethernet netw orks, nam ely the
station bus betw een the bays and the
process bus w ithin a bay. To achieve in-
teroperability, IEC 61850 Edition 2 speci-
fies in greater detail the underlying proto-
cols of these busses. Tw o indispensable
netw ork features for a real-tim e system
are given particular attention: tim e syn-
chronization and netw ork redundancy.
Tim e synchronization is solved by the
sim ple netw ork tim e protocol (S N TP ) [1],
w ith stricter requirem ents taken care of
by the IEEE standard 1588 [2]. R edun-
dancy w as a m ajor hurdle, since the lack
of a com m only accepted redundancy
protocol prom pted m anufacturers to
m arket incom patible proprietary solu-
tions.
IEC 61850 edition 2 now includes tw o
redundancy protocols, w hich are defined
in the IEC standard 62439-3 [3] and ap-
plicable to substations of any size and
topology for the station bus as w ell as for
the process bus: parallel redundancy
protocol (P R P ) and high-availability
seam less redundancy (H S R ). In both
protocols, each node has tw o identical
Ethernet ports for one netw ork connec-
tion. They rely on the duplication of
1 A n o n -re d u n d a n t s ta ti o n b u s
station
supervisory
level
operator
w orkplace
G P S
m ain m ain m ain
backup backup backup
control control control
bay 1 bay 2 bay N
IED IED IED
IED IED IED
IED IED IED
copper
links
s ta ti o n b u s ( ri n g )
optical fibre links
netw ork
control centre
gatew ay
logger
sw itch S
sw itch 1 sw itch 2 sw itch N
2 A ri n g w i th s w i tc h i n g e n d n o d e s
operator w orkplace
sw itch
elem ent
station bus as ring
IED IED
netw ork
control centre
IED IED
gatew ay
printer
gg
IED
control sequence is issued. The process
bus, w hich carries tim e-critical data from
the m easuring units, requires a determ in-
istic m ode of operation, w ith m axim um
delays in the order of 4 m s. The recovery
tim es com piled by IEC technical com m it-
tee 57 (TC 57) w orking group 10 (W G 10)
are sum m arized in 4 .
R edundancy w ill be regularly checked at
intervals of less than one m inute for the
com plete netw ork. O nly one device, sta-
tion operator or gatew ay to the netw ork
com m unication center (N C C ) is needed
to m onitor the netw ork. C onfiguration er-
rors are reported to the station operator
or the N C C gatew ay.
H i g h ly a v a i la b le n e tw o rk to p o lo g y
IEC 62439 [3] is applicable to all indus-
trial Ethernet netw orks [7], since it con-
siders only protocol-independent m eth-
ods. It contem plates tw o basic m ethods
to increase the availability of autom ation
netw orks through redundancy:
R edundancy in the netw ork. The
netw ork offers redundant links and
sw itches, but nodes are individually
attached to the sw itches through
non-redundant links. The gain in
availability is sm all since only part of
the netw ork is redundant. R edundancy
is norm ally not active, and its insertion
costs a recovery delay. A typical
exam ple of such a m ethod is the rapid
spanning tree protocol (R S TP IEEE
802.1D [8]). H ow ever, R S TP can only
guarantee a recovery tim e of less than
a second in a restricted topology.
N evertheless, R S TP is a good choice
for the station bus in non-redundant
system s, such as that show n in 1 .
units, w hich interface to the station
bus 3 . A ring topology at this level also
offers a cost-effective w iring solution.
T i m i n g re q u i re m e n ts i n s u b s ta ti o n
n e tw o rk s
The tim ing requirem ents for the station
and process buses are distinct; they dic-
tate how redundancy is used.
The tim e during w hich the substation tol-
erates an outage of the autom ation sys-
tem is called the gracetim e, and the
netw ork recovery tim e m ust be low er
than the grace tim e. A s w ell as applying
in cases of failure, the recovery tim e also
applies to the reinsertion of repaired
com ponents.
W hen the station bus carries only com -
m and inform ation, delays of som e 100 m s
are tolerated. H ow ever, a delay of only
4 m s is tolerated w hen interlocking, trip
and reverse blocking signals are carried,
although it is unlikely that a failure w ill
take place exactly w hen an (infrequent)
3 A p ro c e s s b u s to p o lo g y
U /I sensors
U /I sensors
I sensors
I sensors
actor
I sensors
I sensors
sw itch control
sw itch control
IA 1 IA L
IC L
IA 2
IB 1
IB 2
IC 1
IC 2
U C S U C L
U A L U A S
9-2 traffic
8-1 traffic
P I: P rocess interface
P M C : P rotection,
m easurem ent, control
P M C 1
P M C 2
P I
P I
P I
P I
P I
P I
P I
P I
P I
P I
P I
5 R e d u n d a n c y i n th e n o d e s
sw itched local area
netw ork (ring) LA N _A
sw itch sw itch
sw itch
sw itch sw itch
sw itch
sw itched local area
netw ork (tree) LA N _B
D A N P
D A N P D A N P D A N P
D A N P S A N
A 1
S A N
A 2
S A N
R 1
S A N
B 1
S A N
B 2
S A N
R 2
R edB ox
4 R e c o v e ry ti m e s c o m p i le d b y th e
I E C T C 5 7 WG 1 0
C o m m u n i c a ti n g C o m m u n i c a ti n g R e c o v e ry
p a rtn e rs p a rtn e rs T i m e
S C A D A to IED
client-server station bus 100 m s
IED to IED
interlocking station bus 4 m s
IED to IED
reverse blocking station bus 4 m s
bus bar
protection station bus 0 m s
sam pled values process bus 0 m s
In a redundant
netw ork, the m ost
im portant param -
eter is the recovery
tim e needed to
restore error-free
operation after a
failure. B oth P R P
and H S R offer zero
recovery tim e.
ring and every node forw ards the fram es
it receives from one port to the other.
W hen the originating node receives a
fram e it sent itself, it discards it to avoid
loops; therefore, no special ring protocol
is needed.
To detect duplicates, the Ethernet fram es
include a sequence num ber increm ented
by the source for each sent fram e. C on-
trary to P R P, the sequence num ber is not
inserted after the payload, but in the
header so the sw itch elem ent can recog-
nize the duplicates before they are re-
ceived entirely. Therefore, cut-through
operation w ith less than 5 s per node is
possible.
W ith respect to a single ring, the bus
traffic is roughly doubled, but the aver-
age propagation tim e is reduced, allow -
ing the ring to support a sim ilar num ber
of devices. Individually attached nodes,
such as laptops and printers are at-
tached through a redundancy boxthat
acts as a ring elem ent.
A pair of redundancy boxes can be used
to attach a seam less ring to a duplicated
P R P netw ork. In this case, each red box
sends the fram es in one direction only.
This overcom es the basic lim itation of a
ring, and enables the construction of a
hierarchical or peer netw ork 8 .
P re c i s i o n c lo c k s y n c h ro n i z a ti o n
The P R P /H S R schem e presents a chal-
lenge for tim e synchronization as defined
in IEEE 1588 because the delays over
the tw o redundant netw orks are differ-
ent. H ere, som e restriction to IEEE 1588
actually enabled the robustness and pre-
cision of the clock system to be in-
creased.
nicate only w ith D A N P s and S A N s at-
tached to the sam e netw ork), or are at-
tached through w hat is know n as a red
box, a device that behaves like a
D A N P 6 .
The nodes detect the duplicates w ith a
sequence num ber inserted in the fram es
after the payload. This allow s full trans-
parency of P R P (D A N P ) and non-P R P
(S A N P ) nodes. The com plete P R P proto-
col can be executed in softw are. N ode
failures are not covered by P R P, but du-
plicated nodes m ay be connected via a
P R P netw ork.
H S R
H S R applies the P R P principle of parallel
operation to a single ring, treating the
tw o directions as tw o virtual LA N s. This
allow s a significant reduction in hardw are
costs because no sw itches are used and
only one link is added. H ow ever, all
nodes of the ring m ust be sw itching
nodes, ie, they have tw o ports and inte-
grate a sw itch elem ent, preferably im ple-
m ented in hardw are, as show n in 7 .
For each fram e sent, a node sends tw o
fram es one over each port. B oth fram es
circulate in opposite directions over the
R edundancy in the nodes. A node is
attached to tw o different redundant
netw orks of arbitrary topology by tw o
ports 5 . Each node independently
chooses the netw ork to use. This
schem e supports any netw ork
topology; the redundant netw orks can
even exhibit a different structure. The
cost of im plem enting this redundancy
m ethod is about tw ice that of the
redundancy m ethod discussed in the
previous bullet, but the gain in
availability is large. The only non-
redundant parts are the nodes
them selves.
W ith regard to P R P, IEC 62439-3 C lause
4 specifies redundancy in devices in
w hich the nodes use the tw o netw orks
sim ultaneously. This offers zero recovery
tim e, m aking P R P suited for all difficult
real-tim e applications.
IEC 62439-3 C lause 5 defines another
redundancy-in-the-nodes solution w ith
H S R , in w hich a sw itch elem ent is inte-
grated in each device. The operating
m ode is the sam e as for P R P.
P R P o p e ra ti n g p ri n c i p le
Each P R P node, called a doubly attached
node w ith P R P (D A N P ) is attached to
tw o independent local area netw orks
(LA N s) operated in parallel. The netw orks
are com pletely separated to ensure fail-
ure independence and can have different
topologies. B oth netw orks operate in
parallel, thus providing zero-tim e recov-
ery and the continuous checking of re-
dundancy to avoid lurking failures 5 .
N on-P R P N odes, called singly attached
nodes (S A N ) are either attached to one
netw ork only (and can therefore com m u-
6 A d u p li c a te d s ta ti o n b u s w i th p a ra lle l re d u n d a n c y p ro to c o l ( P R P )
D A N P
D A N P
D A N P
D A N P
D A N P
S A N
R ed
B ox
D A N P
S A N
S A N
sw itch
sw itch sw itch sw itch
sw itch sw itch sw itch
D A N P D A N P
sw itch
7 A h i g h -a v a i la b i li ty s e a m le s s re d u n d a n c y ( H S R ) p ro to c o l ri n g
node node node node node
node node
singly attached nodes
source destinations
C -fram e
A -fram e
(H S R )
B -fram e
(H S R )
D -fram e interlink
R ed B ox
destinations
sw itch
B A
P R P offers easy
integration of non-
redundant devices,
w hile H S R offers
cost-effective ring
topologies.
H u b e rt K i rrm a n n
A B B S w itzerland
C orporate R esearch
hubert.kirrm ann@ ch.abb.com
R e fe re n c e s
[1] Internet R FC 2030 sim ple netw ork tim e
protocol (S N TP ) Version 4 (1996) from IP v4,
IP v6 and O S I.
[2] The Institute of Electrical and Electronic
Engineers. IEEE S td 1588: S tandard for a
precision clock synchronization protocol for
netw orked m easurem ent and control system s.
[3] International Electrotechnical C om m ission,
G eneva IEC 62439 (2010). H ighly available
autom ation netw ork suites.
Engineers, (2005). C S M A /C D access m ethod
and physical layer specifications. IEEE S td
802.3.
G eneva. IEC 61850-8: C om m unication
netw orks and system s in substations. P art 8-1:
S pecific com m unication service m apping
(S C S M ) M appings to M M S (IS O 9506-1 and
IS O 9506-2) and to IS O /IEC 8802-3.
G eneva. IEC 61850-9-2: C om m unication
netw orks and system s in substations. P art 9-2:
S pecific com m unication service m apping
(S C S M ) S am pled values over IS O /IEC 8802-3.
G eneva (2006). IEC 61784-2, A dditional profiles
for IS O /IEC 8802.3 based com m unication
netw orks in real-tim e applications.
Engineers, (2004). A N S I/IEEE S td 801.2D ,
M edia access control (M A C ) B ridges.
F u th e r re a d i n g
International Electrotechnical C om m ission,
G eneva TC 57 W G 10 IEC 6185090-4. N etw ork
engineering guidelines (in preparation).
D zung, D ., and K irrm ann, H . (2006). S electing a
standard redundancy m ethod for highly
available industrial netw orks. W FS C 2006
Torino.
M eier, S . (2007, January 25). ZH W InES P R P :
D oppelt gem oppelt hlt besser. Electrosuisse,
ITG Fachtagung, Zurich-K loten.
The bay control units (R EC 670) are con-
nected by tw o com pletely separated net-
w ork rings. The entire system is synchro-
nized using S N TP sent in parallel to both
netw orks using tw o independent G P S
receivers w ith integrated S N TP tim e
servers. The com m unication system is
supervised using S N M P and the failure of
the redundant connection of any device
is im m ediately reported to the system .
I d e a l re d u n d a n c y s c h e m e s
P R P and H S R m ake an im portant contri-
bution in achieving interoperability w ith
respect to redundant com m unication
betw een protection, m easurem ent and
control devices from different m anufac-
turers 1 0 . Their success relies on the
ability of A B B to team up w ith com peti-
tors and suppliers to ensure device in-
teroperability in the custom ers interest.
9 A s y s te m o v e rv i e w u s i n g P R P
R EC 670 R EC 670 ....
R EC 670 R EC 670
R edundant Ethernet B us
R EC 670
R EC 670
M icroS C A D A 1 G P S
S w itch S w itch S w itch S w itch S w itch S w itch
M icroS C A D A 2 G P S
8 H S R ri n g o f ri n g s
quadboxes
upper ring (station level)
voltage level 1 voltage level 2 voltage level 3
sub-ring
operator w orkplace
G P S
clock
m aintenance laptop m
1 0 P R P a n d H S R fe a tu re s
P R P and H S R provide ideal redundancy
schem es for IEC 61850-based substations in
that they:
Fulfill all requirem ents of substation
autom ation according to IEC 61850
C an be used in a variety of topolgies, eg,
rings, trees.
A re transparent to the application
Tolerate any single netw ork
com ponent failure
A chieve zero recovery tim e, m aking it
suitable for the m ost tim e-critical processes
D o not rely on higher layer protocols
A re com patible w ith R S TP
P R P allow s nodes not equipped for redun-
dancy to operate on the sam e netw ork
U se off-the shelf netw ork com ponents
(tools, controllers, sw itches and links)
S upport precision tim e synchronization
according to IEEE 1588
H ave been proven in the field in
high-voltage substations
F i e ld e x p e ri e n c e
The first substation autom ation (S A ) sys-
tem for a high-voltage substation w ith
control devices operating under P R P is
now ready for installation. The tests have
proven that the technology is m ature for
substation autom ation devices and it
perform s as expected. O ne of the m ajor
requirem ents for this project w as to have
fully redundant com m unication dow n to
the bay level IED s to rem ove any single
point of failure in the substation control.
This called for full duplication, w ith re-
dundant station com puters (M icroS C A -
D A 1 and M icroS C A D A 2 in hot stand-by
configuration for control and m onitoring
at the substation level as w ell as redun-
dant gatew ay functionality for telecontrol.
For bay level control, A B B s latest control
device for high-voltage applications, the
R EC 670, is used 9 .
printer
T
he developm ent of pow erful
tools and efficient processes
sim plifies the im plem entation
of IEC 61850 across the port-
folio of products, applications and sys-
tem s. Full com pliance to the standard is
verified by an in-house system verifica-
tion center, the w orlds first vendor-
ow ned test laboratory to earn qualifica-
tion by the U C A International U sers
G roup.
The state-of-the-art product portfolio
along w ith proven system integration ca-
pabilities enables A B B to realize the
standards full potential in substation au-
tom ation system s. This is equally en-
sured in system s w ith centralized and
decentralized architectures, G O O S E-
based and distributed functions as w ell
as m ulti-vendor integration and latest
enable ef cient pow er system m anage-
m ent and integrate substations that are
reliably supplying energy from conven-
tional and renew able resources to m illions
of people or are pow ering industrial pro-
ductivity, into the sm art grid.
This m ap show s a selection of IEC 61850
im plem entations around the w orld w ith
A B B participation.
IEC 61850 a
success story
around the w orld
P E T R A R E I N H A R D T S in c e th e p u b lic a -
tio n o f th e I E C 6 1 8 5 0 sta n d a rd a n d th e
c o m m issio n in g o f th e wo rld s rst
m u lti-ve n d o r p ro je c t in L a u fe n b u rg in
2 0 0 4 , A B B h a s su p p o rte d n u m e ro u s
c u sto m e rs in a c c o m p lish in g th e
p a ra d ig m c h a n g e a sso c ia te d with
in tro d u c in g I E C 6 1 8 5 0 su b sta tio n
a u to m a tio n syste m s. M e a n wh ile , m o re
th a n a th o u sa n d syste m s a n d a va st
n u m b e r o f p ro d u c ts h a ve b e e n d e liv-
e re d to a ro u n d 7 0 c o u n trie s re su ltin g in
c o m p re h e n sive e x p e rie n c e with n e w
in sta lla tio n s, re tro t a n d m ig ra tio n
p ro je c ts.
S ubstation autom ation system s pave the
w ay to a sm arter grid
technologies such as sensors integrated
via the process bus.
The continuous com m itm ent to the global
IEC 61850 standard from the m id nineties
and into the future w ith expert engage-
m ent in new editions as w ell as extensions
into other dom ains such as pow er gener-
ation, com m unication betw een substa-
tions and to netw ork control centers al-
low s AB B to support custom ers w anting
to bene t from these developm ents.
O ffering its com prehensive dom ain know l-
edge both of the pow er value chain and
industrial processes, A B B provides utility
and industry custom ers w ith S A system s
leveraging both current and future per-
spectives and bene ts of the standard.
Facilitating enterprise-w ide data integra-
tion, the IEC 61850 autom ation system s
1
5
3
4
6
6 3
A B B R e v i e w S p e c i a l R e p o rt
I E C 6 1 8 5 0
A u g u s t 2 0 1 0
E d i to ri a l C o u n c i l
P e te r Te rw i e s c h
C hief Technology O fficer
G roup R &D and Technology
C la e s R y to ft
H ead of Technology
P ow er S ystem s division
claes.rytoft@ ch.abb.com
H u g o E . M e i e r
H ead of G lobal P roduct M anagem ent
S ubstation A utom ation
hugo.e.m eier@ ch.abb.com
H a rm e e t B a w a
H ead of C om m unications
P ow er S ystem s and P ow er P roducts
harm eet.baw a@ ch.abb.com
P e tra R e i n h a rd t
C om m unications M anager
B usiness U nit S ubstations
petra.reinhardt@ ch.abb.com
A n d re a s M o g le s tu e
C hief Editor, ABB Review
andreas.m oglestue@ ch.abb.com
P u b li s h e r
ABB Review is published by A B B G roup R &D and
Technology.
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ABB Review is free of charge to those w ith an
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P artial reprints or reproductions are per m itted
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P ublisher and copyright 2010
A B B A sea B row n B overi Ltd.
Zrich/S w itzerland
P ri n te r
Vorarlberger Verlagsanstalt G m bH
AT-6850 D ornbirn/A ustria
L a y o u t
D AVILLA W erbeagentur G m bH
AT-6900 B regenz/A ustria
D i s c la i m e r
The inform ation contained herein reflects the view s
of the authors and is for inform ational purposes
only. R eaders should not act upon the inform ation
contained herein w ithout seeking professional
advice. W e m ake publications available w ith the
understanding that the authors are not rendering
technical or other professional advice or opinions
on specific facts or m atters and assum e no
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IS S N : 1013-3119
w w w. a b b . c o m /a b b re v i e w
N ew installation
R etrofit/m igration
7 8
1 0
1 1
1 4
1 5
1 2
1 3
9
2
1 Teck C om incos W aneta 230/63 kV S /S , C anada
2 EG Ls Laufenburg 380 kV S ubstation, S w itzerland
3 ED P D istribuiao Energias six H V/M V stations, P ortugal
4 S enelecs H ann 90/30 kV S /S , S enegal
5 EN ELVEN s and EN ELC O s S oler & M danos S /S s, Venezuela
6 Eletrosuls three 230/69 kV S /S s, B razil
7 EW As Financial H arbour, S itra & B uquw w ah S /S s, B ahrain
8 D EW A S A fram e contracts, D ubai
9 Transcos and A D W EAs new 400 - 11 kV G IS S /S s, A bu D habi
1 0 Federal G rid C om panys O chakovo 500/220/110 kV S /S , R ussia
1 1 N TC s six new 161/22.8 kV S /S s, Taiw an
1 2 S ix new H V substations for P G C IL, India
1 3 S A for P T P LN s five retrofit 150 kV S /S s, Indonesia
1 4 N G C P s P itogo S /S and M eralcos A m adeo S /S , P hilippines
1 5 R io Tinto/H am ersley Irons 220 kV Juna D ow ns S /S , A ustralia
The IEC 61850 open communication standard provides a common framework for substation
automation and facilitates interoperability across devices and systems. ABBs IEC 61850
compliant systems enable real-time control and monitoring and help maximize availability,
efficiency, reliability and safety. They enable flexibility for multi-vendor integration and
extension, in addition to supporting enterprise-wide data integration for efficient power system
management. With an unparalleled installed base and a proven track record of technology
and innovation, ABB is a substation partner you can depend on. www.abb.com
Power under control?
ABB Switzerland Ltd
Tel. +41 58 585 77 44
Fax. +41 58 585 55 77
Email : substation.automation@ch.abb.com
Absolutely.
www.abb.com/substationautomation

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I E C 6 1 8 5 0 : T h e n e w a p p ro a c h 7

P roducts for the standard 16

630 series 650 series IED s 670 series IED s

p ro te c tio n a n d c o n tro l p ro d u c t fa m ily to s u p p o rt th e

protection and control

IED s using hard

IED s are integrated w ith S ystem

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