Concept of IEC61850 Standard and Sub-station automation

The electrical energy is the one of main utility of the global society and it is very essential to improve
reliability and efficiency of the power network. Over the past decade, implementing smart electronic
devices in substation automation systems has grown at exponential rate. The quality and reliability of
modern automated power grid is improving every aspect and every applications of the electrical power
industry. Thus, every piece of equipment within substation automation have been developed some type
of setting, monitoring and/or control.

In order to achieve the communication between these apparatus from different manufacturers,
International Electro-technical commission developed IEC61850 standard for substation automation
systems. This concept transformed the electrical power control and monitoring system from copper –
hard wire to Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN). In the case of substation automation, the
communication plays a critical role in the real – time operations of the power system. IEC61850 standard
is not a communication protocol, but it provides a mechanism to exchange information between relays
peer to peer high – speed communications network without hard wired connection. This mechanism
includes GOOSE messaging, MMS and sample measured values as three of the primary protocols. Prior
to introduce IEC61850 standard, data acquisition systems (DAS) were implemented to automatically
collect the data from substation but this system was time consuming to configure, map and document
the received values from various locations as the bandwidth was limited. The bandwidth is no longer a
limiting factor of the communication systems under IEC61850 standard.

The Intelligent Electronic Device (IED) was introduced with the automated protections and control
functions of electrical power systems to replace the mechanical relays. This single IED can be included
literally thousands of analogue and digital data points and unlimited bandwidth is the significant factor
for high – speed communication. Consequently, in the modern substation automation system under
IEC61850 standard has been achieved the key features of very reliable communication system in terms
of data and services perspective as follows:

 High-speed IED to IED communication

 Networkable throughout the utility enterprise
 High-availability
 Guaranteed delivery times
 Standards based
 Multi-vendor interoperability
 Support for Voltage and Current samples data
 Support for File Transfer
 Auto-configurable / configuration support
 Support for security

The second feature of IEC61850 standard is that existing protocols are not objected - oriented which
means, data from existing protocols have no association with the actual application, equipment or
function. However, the protocol data is contained within a virtual model of function or apparatus where
the data is contained. For example, the application of breaker position utilized with DNP protocol and
indexes inside binary inputs represent the position of the breaker by linking the protocol data to
application. This tool provides the structure way to organize thousands of data points.

IEC61850 provides system specification with a very severe definition of the requirements for many
factors to enable interoperability and this is a significant benefit to the utilities from different vendors to
allow the data exchanging. Thus, utilities can select equipment based on operation and versatility
regardless of communication capability. Likewise, the substation configuration language simplifies the
engineering process and it provides conformance testing and system specifications that minimizes risk of
interoperability issues. IEC61850 Standard implementation for substation automation improves in terms
of financial and technical as all the engineering and the documentation for GOOSE messaging is in
software, instead of drafting plans, constructing, performing and testing. Within IEC61850, substation
automation configurations can be engineer on the software and send to the devices via Ethernet and
this is saving operational hours of designing and implementing the system.