High Voltage Substation Automation and Protection System Based on IEC 61850

Digital Communication is the future of High Voltage (HV) substation automation, protection and control. It not only offer ease of diagnostics but acts fast to isolate healthy feeders from faulty ones. The effect of this digital protection technology is being appreciated by many utilities and industries for the benefit it offers to them and looks to be the future. Some of the utilities are replacing their secondary copper wires with Fibre Optics (FO) and Ethernet wires as they want load the cable trays less and identify the FO better than the secondary copper wires. Conventional relays are being replaced with Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs) during asset management replacement program. Switchyard equipment such as instrument transformers filled with oil and SF6 gas are being replaced with Non-Conventional Instrument Transformer (NCITs). Ushering new devices into the network are not without challenges. These devices and peripherals cannot be put into use by the end user without proper assessment and needs to be validated with number of tests for its performances. To get end users acceptance, laboratory and field tests are carried out to study the propagation delays and performance issues as applicable to digital automation and protection scheme. This paper discusses an early detection of the loss of data packets in a star connected Ethernet Substation Automation Systems (SAS). Understanding a real model in a lab environment is an important step towards performance evaluation and identification of issues. With the involvement of multiple manufacturer in the digital substation, it is good to set a trial of the interoperability of equipment involving their products which could address critical protection issues. This paper focuses on a star connected architecture using an Optimized Network Engineering Tool (OPNET) lab-based software simulating the latency and delays of a digital protection scheme in a 132/22-kV zone substation. This paper shares a practical case study of measurement of latencies while exchanging Generic Object-Oriented Substation Event (GOOSE) messages amongst the IED's passing through peripherals.