Integration of Substation Data

The paper introduces a concept for integration of substation IED data, primarily coming from digital protective relays (DPRs) and digital fault recorders (DFRs). Modern substations are equipped with different types of IEDs. DFRs are traditionally used to capture data from various events and disturbances in the power system that may need to be analyzed. Most of the modern IEDs such as digital relays, power quality meters, and sequence of event recorders can offer data recording function that is quite similar to that of DFRs. In some recent substation designs there are cases where DFR function is replaced by an equivalent function provided by DPRs. There are also cases when both DFRs and DPRs are used and configured to record the same events. In this case records from DPRs are used as a redundant source for event analysis. The paper addresses main requirements for integration of substation data: communication and automated IED data retrieval, unifying event data file formats, verification of event data content, and proper handling of the system configuration parameters. Examples of substation data integration using the proposed concept are discussed through expansion of an existing DFR data integration and analysis system and through introduction of data coming from different substation IEDs. Digital simulator was used to evaluate the concept in the example with multiple IED types