Investigation of interoperability of IEC 61850 protection functions

Abstract

Introduction of IEC 61850 standard defined substation automation system communication. The need of interoperability among the relevant devices coming from different vendors is a necessity to ensure utilities/municipalities obtain value for money. Vendors used their own proprietary tools to achieve communication in a substation. This caused an Intelligent Electronic Device (IED) from vendor A could not communicate with an IED from vendor B. Utilities/municipalities are forced to depend on single vendor solutions in a substation automation system. IEC 61850 systems tout Interoperability as a major gain in the Substation Automation System (SAS) environment. The implementation of interoperable systems in SAS environment requires extensive testing and careful selection of vendors. This involves extensive testing to meet the required requirements of a certain SAS. Interoperability implementation and testing methods need to be formulated and tested rigorously with various scenarios of interoperability in an SAS. GOOSE messages form the foundation of IEC 61850 standard as they are responsible for the copper-less connections for peer to peer communications. GOOSE messages are based on peer to peer communications to enable interoperability at the bay level which is called horizontal communication. IEDs need to be carefully selected to ensure GOOSE messaging interoperability is achieved. Test methods are equally important as methodology to achieve interoperability. The purpose of this research is to perform an investigation on interoperability of IEC 61850 conformant IEDs based on evaluation of their protection functions. The research looks at various vendors on how each has interpreted the IEC 61850 standard. Also an analysis on requirements to achieve interoperability is conducted. Investigation on various vendor independent system configuration tools to ease the implementation burden of a multivendor application is done. Evaluation into flexible object modelling and naming conventions in order to achieve interoperability is performed. Various tests using different tools to assess the integrity of interoperability are completed. The research delivers a methodology to evaluate and implement GOOSE message interoperability. The interoperability methodology can be used for improvement of interoperability applications. The methodology can also be implemented as procurement requirement to ensure interoperability. The evaluation/implementation of interoperability can be included in Factory Acceptance Test (FAT). The methodology to achieve interoperability is only usefully when requirements are clear with regard to what needs to achieved by SAS.