Implementation of IEC 61850 Based Substation Automation Systems in India

Substation Automation Systems (SAS) are no longer a rarity in India. Many utilities have gone in for such systems in the last few years and more utilities are likely to do so in the near future. Considering long term investments, utilities prefer to have systems that can integrate devices from different manufacturers. This need for interoperability among different devices has been met by the new international standard IEC 61850 - “Communication Networks and Systems in Substations”. All major manufacturers have already implemented this standard in their Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs). This paper briefly describes the steps involved in the implementation of IEC 61850 based Substation Automation Systems. IEC 61850 standard defines Substation Configuration Language (SCL) to engineer as SAS. The features of SCL as well as the tools used in the engineering and testing of SAS are discussed in the paper. The paper also covers the Substation Automation system architecture including the communication network.