Testing and troubleshooting IEC 61850 GOOSE-based control and protection schemes

IEC 61850 GOOSE (Generic Object-Oriented Substation Event) provides many advantages, including flexibility and reduced wiring, but introduces new challenges. Traditional tools and techniques cannot check the status of contacts and coils between intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) in a GOOSE-based scheme. Data on Ethernet networks are generally not documented in traditional substation wiring or elementary diagrams. The previous generations of relay test sets are not equipped to monitor GOOSE messages from relays. As hard-wired schemes are converted to GOOSE-based schemes, test personnel need new tools to document, test, and troubleshoot these schemes. New tools include the following: (1) New documentation (2) Relay communications diagnostics (3) Managed switches (4) Network protocol analyzers (5) GOOSE-enabled relay test sets. This paper describes and compares the use of these new tools with traditional testing techniques.