Experiences with IEC61850 a US case study

The advent of the IEC61850 Standard has ushered in a new age for substation automation. This standard has gained a very strong footing in Europe, and its application is spreading across the world. In the USA, the progress towards IEC 61850 implementation is relatively slower. IEC 61850 holds great promises for substation automation and protection. There are many advantages that IEC61850 brings to the area of protection and automation in the form of ease of data collection, reduced construction and design costs, and interoperability between various multi-vendor IEDs. Although this standard is viewed as being very useful and cost-effective, there are several new challenges posed by the implementation of this standard in the US. Issues that concern utilities in the US include the level of cyber security that this standard provides. At this point, the IEC 61850 in the US is limited to the walls of the substation. For the present time, the cyber security issues are within the regulation imposed by the various regulating agencies in the USA. Another issue that is very critical is the new techniques and tools required for commissioning a substation that has multi-vendor IEDs. This main thrust of this paper is to highlight some of the installation and commissioning issues that were encountered during one of the pilot projects at a utility in the US. This pilot project involved the First IEC 61850 substation built in the USA with multi vendor IEDs. There were several challenges that the commissioning team had to face, and it was a learning experience for everybody involved. This paper will highlight all the experiences associated with making this First IEC 61850 substation a great success in the US. This paper will consist of four sections. The First section will cover the hardware needed to support the IEC61850 communication over a TCP/IP network. The second section will explain what and how IEC61850 GOOSE works. This section will include an example of a line relay applica- ion. It will also cover the security aspects of using IEC61850 for substation control and protective relay applications. The third section will cover testing the individual measuring units in the relays, and the overall protection scheme tests. The fourth section is about lessons learned during the initial design and substation commissioning.