Increasing cost-efficiency of substation automation systems by centralised protection functions

New legislative and customer oriented requirements pose challenges to substation automation. Power quality needs to be monitored and reported accurately, controlling and monitoring of the substation needs to be possible from a distant Network Control Centre (NCC), etc. Also old substations need to be refurbished in a future-proof manner that new future requirements (e.g. via distributed generation) can be met without additional costs or interruptions in electricity distribution. Technology developed by ABB in cooperation with Tampere University of Technology (TUT) and Fortum Finland addresses these challenges with centralised protection functions. The new concept facilitates easy upgradeability of substations, while still keeping the installation costs low and the reliability of the system high. New value added functionality will also increase the cost-efficiency of the substation, making the refurbishment of substation profitable even before the end of the lifetime of the relaying.