Distance protection testing in an IEC 61850 environment

Distance protection is a crucial element in the protection system of a transmission line. As the use of IEC 61850-compliant IEDs (Intelligent Electronic Devices) in substations grows, protection testing has to adapt in order to reliably and efficiently test these advanced protection relays. Testing IEC 61850 IEDs poses many challenges, not only because such devices usually combine protection and control functionality, but also because of the complexity of the abstract data model defined by the IEC 61850 standard. In an effort to present protection testing knowledge in a concise and useful manner, this paper aims at giving insight into the workings and testing of IEC 61850 distance protection relays.