APPLICATION OF ETHERNET AND IEC 61850 COMMUNICATIONS

IEC 61850 is the international standard for substation/plant automation systems; it defines the communication between devices in a substation or facility and the related system requirements and supports all automation functions and their engineering. Developments in IED hardware design and developments of high‐speed peer‐to‐peer communication protocols have resulted in a new generation of IEDs. A process bus connects the IEDs to the traditional devices like merge units and is realized as a high bandwidth Ethernet network. A substation usually has one global substation bus but multiple process buses, one for each bay. IEC defines a rather complicated communication structure. IEC 61850 uses an Ethernet connection as the physical medium of communication between IEDs. Ethernet over fiber is becoming the medium of choice where long distances are involved and immunity from electromagnetic interference is desired. Networking media can be divided into two categories: twisted pair copper and fiber optic.