122. Functional Testing of IEC 61850 Based Protection Relays

The integration of multifunctional protection relays in complex substation protection systems requires the development of a standard protocol that will meet the requirements for high speed and reliability necessary to execute protection functions over the substation local area network. The new IEC 61850 standard for communication networks and systems in substations allows the development of distributed, high-speed peer-to-peer communications based protection applications using multicast of status changes information, analog data or sampled analog values. The paper discusses in detail the requirements for functional testing of relays and distributed protection functions. Two typical types of IEC 61850 based protection systems are considered: A system with Substation Bus (IEC 61850-8-1) only; A system with Process Bus (IEC 61850-9-2) and Substation Bus. The methods for testing of both types of systems are proposed based on the following order of system components tests: Testing of IEC 61850 protocol compliance of the individual relays; Functional testing of merging units; Functional testing of IEC 61850 compliance protection relays; Functional testing of bay level distributed protection applications; Functional testing of substation level distributed protection applications. Requirements for configuration, monitoring and reporting of the testing of complex protection systems are discussed. Solutions for the testing of the individual protection relays, as well as for the testing of distributed protection applications are described in detail. Examples from testing of real protection devices are presented at the end of the paper.