The return of the dedicated DFR how IEC 61850 process bus simplifies DFR installation

The advantages of a dedicated, standalone DFR are well known: natively synchronized fault records, large record storage capabilities, high sampling rates, numerous types of triggers, and large numbers of analog and digital recording channels. The main disadvantage to the dedicated DFR is cost: a dedicated DFR must be directly wired to every current, voltage, and status point, resulting in an installed project cost easily 10 times the material cost of the DFR itself. For this reason, electric utilities have been moving away from dedicated, standalone DFRs.