The IEC 61850 in the Portuguese distribution substations: Contemporary challenges and possible solutions

Interoperability may be defined as the ability of intelligent electronic devices (IED's) to exchange and use information correctly. Although the IEC 61850 standards define a consistent methodology for interconnecting IEDs in substation using LAN based technologies to promote interoperability, this ability to exchange information correctly is not always achieved between different IED's from different manufactures. This paper reports the assessment of IED's, featured with IEC 61850 standards and connected to the same communication network from different manufactures. Different interoperability tests are performed and the difficulty and challenges to exchange and receive information is also reported. Possible solutions on the XML schema to generate a compliant SCL file as well as the way to scale up the standardization of the substation project is also explored and discussed in this paper.