Relevant Aspects for Interoperability in Electrical Substations under Implementation of Process Bus IEC 61850-9-2 with Multi-Vendor Devices

IEC 61850 standard is becoming most relevant in electrical industry, focused on interoperability between devices, achieving multi-manufacturer systems communicate and becomes the standard for transport network of digital substation conception, smart grids and automation of power systems. In a power substation, deployment of a communication network based on IEC61850 includes station bus and process bus. Process bus transmits messages with data that contains sampled electrical signals acquired by Merging Units that sends Sampled Values to IEDs. In Colombia, the implementation of process bus remains minimal. In order to promote the migration of conventional substations to digital substations in Colombia, the ISA group, is working together with the first IEC 61850 laboratory in Latin-America from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia at Medellín, leading a pilot project involving laboratory tests, creation of profile and finally the assembly of an architecture with multivendor process bus within a company substation. Furthermore, this document shows important aspects of results obtained out of the first stage of the project. Results obtained from communication tests of different signals are presented as well, as the performance of the devices in this process, also, additional aspects that were evidenced throughout the tests are considered. Finally, some conclusions are represented intended to contribute the sector, searching for more implementation of substations with process bus, according to IEC 61850-9-2 standard.