Improving Operational Efficiency and Reducing Costs in Distribution Utility with the Use of IEC 61850 Communication Protocol

This paper presents the overall advantage of introducing IEC 61850 communication protocol to exchange data information and operation requests between Advance Distribution Management System (ADMS) in a control center and Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs) in the field. The IEC 61850 standard defines communication protocols for IED in electrical substations. In the past 25 years, the standard has evolved, and many Distribution Power Utilities (DPU) incorporated it in their substations, primarily to lower total cost of using a device (install, configure, maintain). With the IEC 61850 standard, a real object-oriented approach for substation automation (SA) has been established and many additional benefits and values have been recognized such as automatic device discovery, standardized naming convention with power system context, eliminating device dependencies with standardized configuration, etc. While the IEC 61850 has been intensively used to communicate at a substation level, going beyond substation and establishing direct communication with the ADMS in control centers will provide more structural, stable, and cyber-secured approach. The paper describes main capabilities and characteristics of Schneider Electric EcoStruxure™ ADMS IEC 61850 communication protocol implementation. It also elaborates on how the implementation meets a utility’s use cases and reveals key benefits of utilizing the IEC61850 communication protocol in a DPU, thus helping it in the era of momentous change, decarbonization, decentralization and digitalization.