Protection and control system upgrade based on IEC- 61850 and PRP

Over the past decade IEC 61850 has gained in popularity in various utilities across the globe for its promise of interoperability, scalability, maintainability and wire reduction. However the application and acceptance of this standard is still in its infancy in the province of Alberta, Canada. This paper presents a case study of one of the first protection system upgrade projects applying the IEC 61850 standard in the province. The focus of this paper is not to discuss the theoretical background of the standard itself. Rather, the purpose is to share and demonstrate the engineering steps taken and lessons learned to successfully implement a fully functional protection and control system based around IEC 61850. The complete system developed for this project includes the following elements: 1) 138/25kV distribution substation consisting of two power transformers and ten feeders. 2) Integration of 17 IEC 61850 compliant intelligent electronic devices (IED) to perform both protection and control (P&C) functions. 3) Substation local area network (LAN) using optical fiber for inter-panel communication and applying the parallel redundancy protocol (PRP) to achieve complete communication redundancy. ) New human-machine interface (HMIs) combining supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) and data gateway functionality within the real-time process database of the substation hardened computer. The paper begins with a high-level overview of the substation configuration and its P&C requirements. System protection and apparatus control philosophies using the IED and HMI/gateway are described. The applications and steps adopted to engineer inter-IED communication via generic object oriented substation events (GOOSE) are discussed in details. Next, the benefits of factory acceptance testing and the scope of site commissioning taken to verify the correct operation of the system are described. The paper concludes with a lessons learned section comparing this project with the traditional implementation.