Standardised communications in substations

There have been a number of innovations with intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) in the substation, offering communications capabilities with IEDs being available from a number of vendors. These IEDs are now becoming a common feature of the substation and an obvious benefit to the user will be interoperability between devices from different vendors. Early IEDs provided communications capabilities that were proprietary to the device manufacturer, and thus presented huge problems to the “system integrators”. When building systems the integrator often had incompatibilities with the physical communications interfaces, the protocol itself, the addressing of information, the presentation of information-to name but a few. This paper gives details of a way forward to achieve interoperability-with the use of the standard series IEC 61850 “Communication networks and systems in Substations”. The paper examines the subjects of: the IEC 61850 standard-its origin, an overview of the standard itself, and its current status; the status of the “substation automation communications demonstration initiative” project in the USA; and the status and findings of the European pilot projects OCIS and PINOCIO