® TEcNICO / IEC 61850 Process bus and impact on substation desig “Por: Marco C. Janssen “Networks and Systems for n international standard that ia the design and operation of One ‘of the most significant changes that will Geog le sebetation deen the posclliy fo use digitized information throughout the substation including the high voltage components. This so called IEC 61850 “process bus" allows for the elimination of a significant amount of traditional connections and thus a fundamental change in the design of substations. Index terms TEC 61850, substation design, substation automation syste- ms, process bus, station bus. Introduction By now almost the entire world has heard of the IEC 61850 standard Communication Networks and Systems for Utility Automation and many utilities have taken the decision to implement this stendard in theit substations, Until now the majority of the substations use IEC 61850 to replace existing functionality often not touching one of the most ground breaking concepts of the standard, the so-called “process bus”. The concept of the process bus allows for the use of intelligent interfaces to the high voltage switchgear. This means that the traditional cabling and wiring from and to 144 the high voltage components can be veplaes more opiical fiores. The impact of the process bus on substation dramatic as the replacement of the traditio optical fibre not only means the elimination of connections, but also the of hundreds of ten a significant amount of drawings, installation testing, and maintenance activities. The simplification of the hardware infrast substation through the application of the p thus have a significant impact on the substal substations. ; The levels of functional integration and flexibility ‘munications based solutions bring significant cost in all stages of a project, It affects not only t of the substation protection, monitoring and cont bby replacing the hardwited interfaces with comm links, It also allows to teconsider the design of the fi tage installations regarding the number and the lo switchgear components necessary to perform the B function of a substation in a high voltage network. The use of high-speed peer-to-peer communicatiot Generic Object Oriented System Events (GOOSE) and sampled values from non-conventional sensor for the introduction of distributed applications, Ina the use of opiical local area networks leads in the dit of copper-less substations. MUNDO ELECTRICO N° 62wanurnumdeetectrica.com Conventional substation design Conventional substations are designed using standard! design procedures for the high voltage switchgear in combination with copper cables for all interfaces between primary and secondary equi- pment, Several different types of circuits are used in the substation: * Analog (cunrent and voltage) * Binary - protection and control signals + Power supply - DC or AC Depending on the size of the subs- tation the location of the switchgear components and the complexity of the protection and control system there can be a huge number of cables with different lengths and sizes that need to be designed, installed, commissioned, tested and maintained. Figure 1 Conventional substation design A typical conventional substation has ‘multiple insrument transformers and ‘breakers (Figure 1) associated with the protection, contol, monitoringand other devices being connected from the yard fo a control house with the individual equipment panels. The different types of cables are used for the connections between all these components, As can be seen from Figure 2, all cables ave cut toa specific length and bundled, which makes any required future modifications very labour intensive. This is especially, true in the process of refurbishing old substations where the cables insulation is starting to fail ‘igure 2 Sulbstelon panel wiring The large amount of copper cables and the distances that they need to cover to provide the interface between the different devices exposes them to the impact of electromagnetic ransionts and the possibility for damages as a result of equipment failure or other events. The design of the conventional substa- tion needs to take into consideration the resistance of the cables in the process of selecting instrument transformers and protection equipment, as well as their connection to the instrament transformers and between themselves, The issues of CT saturation are of special importance to the operation of protection relays under maximum fault conditions. Failures in the cables in the substation may lead to a malfunction of protection or other devices. In some cases, such as an open CT circuit they represent a safety issue, especially when it occurs while the primary winding is eneraized. The induced secondary emf. under these circumstances can be high enough to present a danger to people's life and equipment insulation, The above is definitely not a complete list of all the issues that need to be taken into consideration in the design of a conventional substation. It is intended only to provide some examples that will help us better understand the impact of IEC 61850 in the substation, a TECNICO ® In order to take full advantage of any new technology, it necessary to unders- tand what it provides, TEC 61850 Substation Hierarchy ‘The development of different functions in the substation protection and control system is possible only when there is a good understanding of beth the problem domain and the IEC 61850 standard. IEC 61850 not only defines how data is communicated between functions in the substation, but also describes the functionality of the substation in an object-oriented approach. The concent of distributed functions is one of the key elements of the standard that allows for utilities to rethink and optimiz substation designs, A function in an IEC 61850 b: tegrated protection and control system can be local to a specific primary device (dishibution feeder, transformer, etc.) or distributed and based on communicatio- ns between tivo or more IED’s over the substation local area network. IEC 61850 defines several ways for data exchange between IED’s that can be used for different forms of distributed applications. They introduce a new con- cept that requires a different approach in order to define the individual compo- nents of the systems in substations. Considering the requirements for the re- Habilty, availability and maintainability Of functions, it is clear that in conven- tional systems numerous primary and backup devices need to be installed, wired to the substation equipment that they interface with and that must be tested and maintained. ‘The interface requirements of the many of these devices differ. As a result spe- cific multi core instrument transformers ‘were developed that allow for accurate metering of the energy or other system parameters on the one hand and pro- vide a high dynamic range used by e.g. protection devices, IEC 61850 defines several different in- ‘MUNDO ELECTRICO No 82 145@® TECNICO hat can be used for various substation applications. They may use dedicated or shared physical connections -the communications links between the physical devices. The allo- cation of functions between different physical devices defines the requirements for the physical interfaces, and in some cases may be implemented into more than one physical LANs. ‘The functions in the substation can be distributed between JEDs on the same, or on different levels of the substation functional hierarchy — Station, Bay or Process. frz0 Staion ox Ee] ee ie of ee (rae) ones) [Measurements] {_Recoring | Fas aacuremonts | Figure Lotte interfaces in IEC 61850 These levels and the logical interfaces are shown by the lagical interpretation of Figure 3. The logical interfaces of specific interest to distributed applications shown above are defined as: IF4, 5: CT and VT instantaneous data exchange (especially samples) between process and bay level IF8: direct cata exchange between the bays especially for fast functions like interlocking, The first one is used typically for Process bus applications, anid the second - Station bus communications A significant improvement in functionality and reduction of the cost of integrated substation protection and control systems can be achieved based on the IEC 61850 based com- munications when applying (non-conventional) instrument transformers with digital interface based on IEC 61850-9-2 (Process Bus) and its Implementation Agreement IEC 61850 9-2LE published by the UCA International Users Group. The interface of the instrument transformers (both conventio- nal and non-conventional) with different types of substation protection, control, monitoring and recording equipment i through a device called Merging Unit. This is defined in IEC 61850 as: “Merging unit: interface unit that accepts multiple a Gg CTT and binary inputs and produces multiple time § chronized serial unidizectional muli-drop digital point point oulputs fo provide data communication via the lo interfaces 4 and 5” Merging Units have the following functionality * Signal processing of all sensors - conventional or & conventional + Synchronization of all measurements - 3 currents voltages * Analogue interface - high and low level signals + Digital interface - IEC 61850-9-2 Its important to be able to interface with both co and non-conventional sensorsiin order to allow the imp ‘ation of the system in existing or new substations. ‘The Merging unit has similar elements (as can be seen Figure 4) and can be considered as the analog input ms ‘of a conventional protection or other multifunction The difference is that in this case the substation LAN foums as the digital data bus between the input ‘Arpliior, Fitors | ("Analog to ‘Analog creat > Digital b+) Group Delay D1_| | Convener Calbeator user can design it with different communications arct as described in the next section of the paper. IEC 61850 Substation Architectures JEC 61850 is very often being implemented gradi starting with adaptation of existing IEDs to support the communications standard over the Station Bus and ai same time introducing some Process Bus based solutio 146 MONDO ELECTRICO Ne 62