Development of the IEC 61850–9–2 software merging unit IED test and training platform

The IEC 61850 standard specifies a data model and communication service mapping to facilitate exchange of data and events amongst devices in a substation automation system (SAS). One of the architectural components of an IEC 61850 SAS is the process bus. The process bus is an isolated network segment used for carrying Sampled Value (SV) streams of process data and possibly GOOSE status and command signals between Merging Units (MU) and the IEDs implementing monitoring, protection and control functionality related to the connected secondary equipment. The term MU refers to network-enabled devices that connect to instrument transformers in the switchyard streaming packets of sampled values onto the process bus as defined in IEC 61850-9-2. This paper describes work done to develop an IEC 61850-9-2 implementation and integrate it into a testing environment which can simulate primary and secondary equipment modeled substation scenarios and provide a parametric emulation of the functionality of a MU.