SUBSTATION AUTOMATION SYSTEM BASED ON IEC 61850 ARCHITECTURE

Maciej Goraj
GE Multilin Av. Pinoa, 10 - 48170 Zamudio, Spain maciej.goraj@ge.com

Abstract -- This paper provides an overview of the project development process of the substation automation system based on the IEC 61850, the recent international standard for communication within substation in electrical power systems. The system described in this paper has been designed in scope of the Edison-Simeri Crichi project of new 800-MW combined-cycle power plant in Calabria, southern Italy. The paper includes brief description of project development stages with emphasis on testing methodology. IEC 61850 off-the-shelf devices from different manufacturers have been used. Finally description of state of the art in IEC 61850 development and deployment is presented. Index TermsIEC61850, Substation Automation

I. PROJECT DESCRIPTION

he combined-cycle power plant with capacity of 800 MW is based on two General Electric Frame 9F gas turbines, two heat recovery steam generators and a single Toshiba steam turbine, a seawater condenser and two desalination units. The electrical system is composed of a high voltage level of 380 kV and two medium voltage levels of 17 kV and 10 kV. There are two GE substation control units and protection relays manufactured by GE and Siemens. In the high voltage area there are four D60 main distance protections, five T60 transformer protections, six G60 generator protection units, three C60 breaker management relays, sixteen F650 units and one 7SA522 Siemens distance relay. On 17kV voltage level there are ninety-eight F650 Bay Controllers and ten M60 motor protections installed in motors with power higher than 1000kW. On 10kV voltage level there are ninety-seven F650 units. Substation control units to communicate with IEDs use two communication protocols. The principal protocol used for communication with the majority of devices is IEC 61850. Devices from three manufacturers were selected. Protection and control IEDs from GE and Siemens and automatic tap changers from MR (Maschinenfabrik Reinhausen), all these devices communicate through IEC 61850 with two GE

substation control units simultaneously. The communication architecture is fibre optic ethernet double ring with 64 GE Multilink managed switches designed to work in industrial environment. The total number of IEC 61850 capable IEDs is 242. All IEDs, mainly being GE F650 bay controllers and GE UR relays, and also Siemens distance relay 7SA522 and MR TAPCON have KEMA IEC 61850 conformance certificates. One of the projects requirements for IEC 61850 IEDs was the use of off the shelf devices with standard firmware and not project-specific enhanced devices. Figure 1 shows the communication architecture designed for IEC 61850 devices used in the project. The second protocol used is Modbus, this is because of the requirement of the customer to use other devices like GE Hydran and EPM6000 that are not IEC 61850 capable. GE Hydran is an on-line monitor of combustible gases and moisture in dielectric oils used in the four main transformers of the plant. EPM6000 is a multi-function power metering system and there are fourteen of these devices in the system. Modbus capable devices communicate over serial lines with station controllers and are not shown on figure 1.

Fig 1. IEC61850 communication architecture in Simeri Crichi project

The substation control units communicate with the dispatch centre through IEC-870-5-104 protocol and the SAS designed for the Simeri Crichi project contains two workstations running GE_Power system manufactured by GE Multilin. Figure 2 depicts a screenshot of GE_Power automation system.

After the configuration process, integration system tests were performed to check whether station control units could communicate correctly to devices and all data were refreshed. Next task in the schedule was performance tests. A testbed was prepared, which included 120 devices installed in racks and which were communicating simultaneously with station control units. In order to save space in the laboratory a special rack was built which contained CPU boards with ethernet card of relays. The total number of 108 CPU boards of F650 relays has been placed in the rack, each CPU board has been running complete firmware of F650 relay and was maintaining two simultaneous TCP connections with station control units. Figure 3 depicts the rack with F650 CPU boards. Apart from this rack also a cabinet with 12 complete F650 relays fully equipped with CT/VT module, I/O boards and front panel has been connected to the same network. The complete devices mounted in the cabinet have been wired with digital inputs in order to simulate data changes, interlocks, and also have been wired to auxiliary relays to test switchgear and operations. The purpose of these heavy traffic conditions test was to prove that each GE substation control unit could communicate via IEC 61850 simultaneously with more than 120 devices. Two network analysers, UniCA (KEMA) and Ethereal (free software) have been used to calculate response time at protocol level. At the HMI level it has been checked that the refresh of the whole substation can be done within 1 second.

Fig 2. Screenshot of GE_Power automation system.

Both substation control units acquire digital and analogue data from IEDs using IEC 61850 buffered and unbuffered reports. Direct control scheme is used for sending control operations, oscillography files are obtained through IEC 61850 file services. Despite that in IEC 61850 standard the protocol specified for time synchronisation is SNTP, the IRIG-B standard has been chosen for time synchronisation of devices in order to assure 1ms resolution. During testing it has been proven that using SNTP protocol for time synchronisation the typical resolution obtained for most of IEDs was around 1-2ms, however in some cases it was observed that time difference between devices reached 8-10ms. GOOSE is used for peer-to-peer communications between devices. Several GOOSE applications have been designed, among them sending tripping/blocking signals from feeders to transformer relays, sending breaker status from transformer relay to other IEDs and also acquiring status and measurements by distance protection relay. II. PROJECT DEVELOPMENT During the project development a detailed schedule of tasks has been prepared. First task was the configuration of substation control units, which was done with the use of ICD files from different IEDs. ICD files are based on XML language and have standard format for description of capabilities and items of each device. Also proprietary tools were used for configuration of settings and logic in all IEDs.

Fig 3. Testbed for heavy traffic conditions based on special rack with 108 CPU boards equipped with ethernet cards and connected through switches.

In parallel to performance tests of client-server scheme of IEC 61850 the GOOSE interoperability and performance tests were handled. Configuration of GOOSE was done with software tool that generated an SCD file. This file contained configuration of all GOOSE messages sent by different devices and also the information which IED subscribes to, which GOOSE and which signals it should pick up from each message. The SCD file was then imported by different

software tools particular for each IED and converted either to CID format either to internal format in order to configure devices. Finally an estimation of time in man-hours savings of integration process has been calculated according to the performed tasks during project development and compared to the time spent in similar projects based on other communication protocols. The conclusion led to the statement that IEC 61850 reduces around 15% the man hours in the integration effort of vendors own IEDs (as compared to other protocols: Modbus RTU, DNP 3.0, IEC 870-5-104) while the improvement in third party devices engineering effort reaches from 50 to 70% depending on the complexity of the application. III. STATE OF THE ART IN IEC 61850 As in IEC 61850 there are services and features that are optional still some incompatibilities between vendors can occur. To avoid these situations manufacturers of devices should implement not only the minimal subset of services and should allow the possibility to have certain features user-configurable. Because of the complexity of IEC 61850 standard it is not easy to make a fixed implementation of the protocol that would adapt to every application and to different user needs. Making it user-configurable the vendor tries to avoid making plenty of customer or project-specific fixed implementations. An example of interoperability problem is a situation where the IEC 61850 IED from vendor A implements buffered reports only and the IEC 61850 client from vendor B implements unbuffered reports only. Therefore the client cannot obtain data from the IED using reports. At current stage (mid 2006) there is no official IEC 61850 procedure for conformance testing of IEC 61850 client applications. Thus the IEC 61850 client devices should be flexible enough to communicate with different implementations of IEC 61850 IEDs. The client should support both buffered and unbuffered reports and it should be able to accept all types of data as a data set members. Another problem can exist while the format of GOOSE messages from IEDs of vendor A and vendor C is not compatible and GOOSE in one of the IEDs is not configurable. The IEC 61850 standard does not explicitly say how the GOOSE should be implemented. It specifies the format of the message and says that any kind of data can be exchanged. Therefore the number of elements in GOOSE messages and format of these elements is not specified. Some manufacturers have limitations regarding reduced number of data types and other requires specific order of data types within GOOSE. At the beginning of IEC 61850 many manufacturers were implementing fixed GOOSE, which made

interoperability difficult. At this moment almost all manufacturers have configurable GOOSE, which means that there is a possibility to configure the number and type of data both at reception and transmission level of GOOSE. An important issue for development of a project based on IEC 61850 is the availability of software tools that make use of SCL language. SCL is defined in part 6 of IEC 61850 standard and it is the configuration description language for communication in electrical substations related to IEDs. It specifies a common file format for describing IED capabilities, system specification in terms of a single line diagram and substation automation system description. Part 6 of IEC 61850 introduces four types of common files, these files are ICD, CID, SCD and SSD. Figure 4 depicts complete envisioned engineering process using SCL and explains meaning of SCL files.

Fig 4. Substation automation engineering process using SCL.

ICD file is the capability description file delivered by IEDs software or directly provided by the vendor and the CID file is similar to ICD file with the difference that this is the file obtained after the configuration process. The ICD file contains complete information about data model and services available in the IED. With the use of ICD files the system configuration tool is capable of definition communication parameters within substation like IP addresses and also GOOSE and reporting applications. After the configuration process the output generated by the tool is the SCD file which is a file that contains information of all IEDs in the substation. The SCD file should then be imported to each device in order to extract its configuration information. Some manufacturers permit directly to download the SCD file to its devices while others require a tool that parses SCD file extracts relevant data from it and generates the CID file. In fact the Configured IED Description or CID file is optional in IEC 61850 standard. Thus some vendors decided to

have CID in proprietary format while other vendors create the CID in similar way as ICD. SCL tools can be divided in two groups. The first group consists of IED configuration tools, which are used for ICD generation and CID creation or parsing of SCD files. These tools are vendor specific applications and at current stage of IEC 61850 most vendors of protection devices have them well implemented. The second group of tools are system configuration (SCD creation) and system specification (SSD creation) tools which should be independent software programs capable of working with standard files from third party devices At this moment system configuration tools are already available on the market however these applications typically work well with vendors own devices but have limited functionality for other vendors IEDs. This is basically a consequence of the use of private or proprietary parts in SCL language. Future collaboration between manufacturers should conduct to agreements and should avoid these obstacles. On the other hand the system specification tools that are available now [1] are very simple and may fit for educational use only. The idea behind the SSD file is the design of SAS functional specification with the single line diagram and assignation of IEC 61850 logical nodes to physical devices. It is important to notice that not all of devices settings can be configured using tools that work with ICD files. There is a common misunderstanding that SCL language based applications will make proprietary tools not necessary any longer. It is not true as not all aspects of todays IEDs are covered by SCL. To define internal PLC logic equations in IEDs or establish some settings not mapped to IEC 61850 still proprietary tools are needed. Good examples are protection settings, which are all optional in logical nodes defined in IEC 61850-7-4. Therefore some vendors do not map protection settings in IEC 61850 at all while other vendors map some of them and even map their particular settings making extensions to the standard, which is permitted within IEC 61850. IV. CONCLUSIONS The lessons learnt prove that IEC 61850 eases the integration process of substation network formed by devices from different vendors. The use of communication standard that unifies the information model and the set of common services related to substation automation shortens time [2] for system configuration and interoperability tests. SCL language defines standard file format for device description and substation configuration files, this helps in great manner in the process of engineering and integration of

devices from different vendors. Having complete data model of devices in digital format permits that certain stages of configuration can be done offline without having physically all devices. SCL language should also ease the re-usability of already created projects. Nevertheless SCL based tools still need to get maturity. The election of off-the-shelf devices with IEC 61850 conformance certificates reduces the risk of protocol incompatibility. However having the IEC 61850 certificate does not completely guarantee interoperability. Another advantage of IEC 61850 for substation automation is GOOSE messaging which provides faster performance [3] than traditional wiring and means less cabling in substation as all devices are connected via ethernet. The communication architecture used for the project described in this paper is a hybrid solution formed mainly by IEC 61850 capable IEDs and also by devices that communicate through Modbus protocol. It is important to keep in mind that for new substation automation projects many devices will have IEC 61850 communication protocol but there also will be devices like transformer gas-in-oil analyzers, top-oil temperature sensors, capacitor banks, etc. that will only communicate through legacy protocols. Therefore at system design stage it should be understood that IEC 61850 will not be the only communication standard used in the system. V. REFERENCES Web links:
[1] VisualSCL software available from Applied Engineering, Inc. (ASE), at http://ase-systems.com/ Systems

Papers from Conference Proceedings (Published):

[2] B. Kasztenny, J. Whatley, E.A. Udren, J. Burger, D. Finney, M. Adamiak, A Practical Application Primer for Protection Engineers, 60th Annual Georgia Tech Protective Relaying Conference, Atlanta, USA, 2006 D. Baigent, M. Adamiak, S. Evans, "Practical Considerations in Application of UCA GOOSE", Proceeding of the 2000 Georgia Tech Protective Relaying Conference, Atlanta, USA, 2006.

[3]

VI. BIOGRAPHY
Maciej Goraj was born in 1976 in Poland. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from the Warsaw University of Technology in 2000, 2001 respectively. After graduation Maciej moved to Spain and joined General Electric Company where he continues to work. In GE he has worked as firmware developer of communication protocols for protection relays. He is currently involved in the design of IEC 61850 implementations in the GE Multilin 650 Relay family of power system protection products.