Status on the First IEC61850 Based Protection and Control, Multi-Vendor Project in the United States

The new IEC 61850 substation communication standard is almost two years old. Worldwide, there are already over one hundred substations that have been commissioned and running with this new standard. Several projects in North America have been implemented with IEC 61850 by using products from a single manufacturer. This paper will report on the status of a 500 kV project, which is the first multi-vendor project in the United States to use this new standard. The goal of the project is to utilize the new IEC 61850 standard to its fullest (as practically possible) therefore confirming that the standard is much more than just a communication protocol. Interoperability, one of the major advantages of IEC 61850, will be demonstrated. The focus of the paper is not to describe or explain the theoretical background of the standard itself but rather to show and demonstrate the practical use of an actual multi-vendor project and how the standard applies to protection engineers. In addition, the paper will describe to the relay engineers that an IEC 61850 based system must be considered an integral part of the protection and control system and not just another protocol integration for substation data/automation. The paper will describe the process that was developed and used during this project to configure the IEDs, clients, and the communication infrastructure as defined by the customer. The exchange of IED configuration data between different vendors was achieved by using the IEC 61850 defined substation configuration language (SCL). We will demonstrate how each vendors private tools can export data into a standard format and be integrated into a common product using standard tools as well. The meaning and the purpose of the standard ICD files (IED capability description) and SCD files (substation configuration description) will be explained. One goal of this project is to eliminate or significantly reduce wiring between the relays and between the control house and the breakers. The wire reductions are replaced with the communication infrastructure fulfilling the protection and control applications by exchanging IEC 61850 GOOSE messages over Ethernet (e.g. breaker position and protective trips). The paper will also cover test tools and procedures that were used to find and eliminate problems during the integration of the protection & control system and the new IEC 61850 standard. Lessons learned throughout the project will be discussed