Automated event management in IEC 61850 substations

This paper describes a system for automated event management in IEC 61850-based substations. Event monitoring in transmission and distribution substations used to be a manual process by utility protection engineers, primarily related to fault events. However, with the recent advances in modern utility communication technologies, particularly IEC 61850 utility automation, coupled with expanded monitoring capabilities of the protection devices, this process can be streamlined, automated, and expanded to additional classes of events. A new method for configuration of a substation-based event processing system using Substation Configuration Description file analysis is also presented.