Development and operational Experience of Substation Automation System Implementation along with 9–2 LE compliant Process Bus with conventional CTs and PTs

IEC61850 is the international state-of-the-art standard in substations providing technology for protection, integration, control, monitoring, metering and testing. This suite of communication protocol has been highly successful in the field of substation automation since its introduction in 2004. The model driven approach of this protocol has resulted in significant improvement in both cost and performance of the protection and control systems. It also addresses interoperability of multi vendor Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs) in a substation.

The case study discussed in this paper is related to the field experience of IEC 61850 based design for a 132 kV/33 kV Substation Automation System (SAS) project configured for both station and process bus. A brief introduction on the implementation of the standard with focus on components, network topology and system requirements are followed by the tests done in the lab. The issues related to communication system at process level and station level are also analyzed. Experience derived from the successful field trials of more than two years in using indigenously developed IEC61850 compliant devices for Substation Automation is also shared in this paper. Challenges faced during the integration of the indigenously developed merging unit to the existing station comprising of Bay Control Units (BCU), third party relays and meters, gateways, Client and Human Machine Interface (HMI) has also been deliberated.