5

IMPROVING THE MANAGEMENT OF ]PROTECTION AND CONTROL SYSTEM ASSETS

BY USING A PLATFORM CONCEPT
D.M. Peck, B. Nygaard, H. Meier
ABB Network Partner Ltd, Switzerland

ABSTRACT
Throughout the history of power system protection,
improvements have continuously been made to all1
aspects of protection equipment. The most important
advances were made possible with the introduction of
static technology, and more recently numerical
technology. Microprocessor technology has been
utilised in power system protection, control and
measurement equipment for some years now. Multiplefunction numerical protection relays are current1y
available
from
many
protection
equipment
manufacturers, providing user-configurablc inputs and
outputs, substation control system jnterhces,
disturbance recording, etc.
The most recent developments e:mploy a common
software and hardware platform foir various protection
and control products. This paper outlines the principles
upon which such a platform is designed and considers
the factors that will influence future equipment
development. Such platforms are characterised by a
modular hardware architecture, running modular
application software from a library of functions.
The rapid development of microelectronics technology
has had a great influence on the life-cycle of systems in
which it is employed and thereby on the management
of Protection and control equipment assets. When
updating e.g. processor module hardware and software,
a platform approach allows an increase in processing
power respectively protection and control functionality
and an extension to system life-times.
A platform approach also allows appreciable long-temi
economic and technical benefits for both manufacturers
and users alike. For example, users profit from the fact
that, for a complete range of products, the number of
spare parts is practically reduced to that of one
equipment. The amount of training for testing,
maintenance, and operation of the man-machine
interface etc. is also correspondingly reduced.

I. INTRODUCTION
Protective relaying equipment can be divided into three
general categories or generations, electromechanical,
static and numeric. The protection functions anti
characteristics of electromechanical equipment are
determined in the main by the physical geometry of this
magnetic circuits, iron cores and moving parts (e.g.
induction discs) and the winding arrangements. Their
fixed functionality together with the fairly limited
Developments in Power System Protection, 25-27th March 1997,
Conference Publication No. 434, 0 IEE, 1997

parameter setting possibilities, at least compared with

todays expectations, are but two of the obvious
disadvantages of this generation of equipment.
Static or electronic relays, enabled the performance,
flexibility and reliability of protection equipment to be
improved. Flexibility was increased since relays were
built using common hardware modules. Thus the
difference between, for example, a line distance relay
and a transformer differential current relay was
basically in the measuring module; interposing input
transformers, tripping output units, power supplies etc.
were part of a family of modules. Newer technology,
especially the use of digital components, brought
further advantages, reducing size and auxiliary power
supply requirements, as well as allowing more of the
manufacturing to be made automatically.
The newest generation of equipment is known as
numeric or digital. Analogue input currents and
voltages, having been transposed to electronic level
voltage signals, are digitised immediately in an
analogue-digital converter. All protection functions are
then implemented as numerical algorithms, that is to
say, software programs running on general purpose
microprocessors. The protection functions are
determined by the software alone, and for a given
hardware, virtually any protection function can be
realised. Some of the early microprocessor based
protection relays, e.g. simple overcurrent and frequency
relays, were a combination of static and numerical
technology and as such not strictly numeric since
analogue signal processing circuitry preceded the
analogue-digital converter
and
microprocessor
circuitry.

A numeric protection relay can be compared to a

personal computer. Whereas a PC is used to run a
multitude of application programs stored on a hard-disk
(commercial programs,
complex mathematical
packages, etc.), a numeric relay executes protection and
control application programs stored in non-volatile
flash memory or EPROM. A PC is however obsolete
within a few years, mainly because new application
programs (and operating systems) require faster
hardware and more memory. On the other hand, more
powerful hardware opens up opportunities for more
complex software. This leapfrog behaviour is also
evident in the area of numeric protection and control
equipment. The expectations and demands made upon
them are forever increasing, user-friendly man-machine
interfaces (MMI), time stamped event lists, integrated

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disturbance recordings, connections to station control
systems with a choice of protocols, etc. are demanded.
The processing power of todays microprocessors is
orders of magnitudes greater than those of earlier
devices employed in the first microprocessor based
relays, and the trend continues with ever increasing
performance, as with PCs.
When considering the life-cycle of the protection
equipment it can be seen that this has been reduced
through the generations. Many electromechanical
relays are still in service after 40 years or more and are
still manufactured in some countries. Static relays
having been introduced in the mid-60s are making
place for numeric equipment, which is expected to have
a life-cycle in the order of 20-25 years, and spare parts
to be available for a period of approximately 10 years
following phase out.

2. PROTECTION AND CONTROL EQUIPMENT

AS ASSETS
Every part of a power system is a power utilities asset,
this includes protection and control equipment as well
as primary plant equipment. In the era of supply
industry deregulation and cost cutting, the procurement
of protection and control equipment is an investment in
which cost aspects play an increasingly important role.
One indication of this trend is shown by the fact that
many power system and protection engineers are seen
as being, and are indeed called, asset managers. In this
respect, their task is to manage secondary systems and
equipment, including refurbishment, such that long
term operating costs are as low as possible whilst
assuring the quality of the electricity supply. Trained
personnel as well as technical know-how should also be
considered as assets, which should be employed
efficiently.
When calculating costs the complete equipment lifecycle must be considered, including installation,
commissioning, staff training, maintenance and
support. If a utility has many types of equipment from
various manufacturers installed in its power system,
costs resulting from training and maintenance will be
unnecessarily high. If on the other hand, they have
equipment from at the most two manufacturers, these
costs can be reduced to an acceptable level, especially if
a number of products are part of the same family and
based on a common software/hardware platform.
Utilities often have one or two examples of exotic

and costs. Engineers can familiarise themselves with an

MMI program off-line and directly load settings into
the equipment once in the station. This reduces the risk
of incorrect settings and increases system security.
Equipment spare parts represents unproductive capital
investment which utilities obviously wish to keep to a
minimum. This is an important aspect of a platform
comprising common hardware components. The
number of spare parts for a complete range of products
comprising for example line, transformer and generator
protection as well as bay control, is practically reduced
to that of one equipment. System availability is
improved and mean-time-to-repair reduced.
Given the shortening life-cycles of electronic
components and the equipment in which they are used,
long-term strategies are more important than ever. This
raises the question of how to take full advantage of the
continuous progress being achieved in microelectronic
technology without requiring investment in new
equipment every few years. The solution to this lies in
the concept of a modular hardware and software
platform, as discussed in more detail below. By
upgrading intelligent processing modules, equipment
continuity is guaranteed and its life-cycle extended.
Numeric equipment permits copper wiring to be
replaced by serial communication using fibre-optic
cables, thus reducing installation, engineering and
maintenance costs. Transmission reliability and
insensitivity to electromagnetic disturbances are also
improved. Marshalling wiring can be replaced by
multi-core cables using standard patch-panels.
Other aspects of numeric equipment resulting in an
overall cost reduction can be summarised as follows:
self-supervision considerably improves equipment
availability and maintenance can be performed on
demand. Disturbance recording information can
improve understanding of the power system and its
weaknesses, leading to improved protection strategies
and to a more secure power system. Furthermore,
acquired data can be used for monitoring primary plant
equipment, optimising maintenance.

3. PLATFORM FOR PROTECTION

CONTROL PRODUCTS

AND

Hardware
Applying modular hardware design to protection and
control equipment is nothing new, since this was one of

protection equipment requiring proportionally more

the central features of most static equipment, enabling

time to maintain than more standard equipment. Each

time an engineer perfoms maintenance tests or
changes settings, he must again familiarise himself
with the equipment. If all the numeric equipment
shares the same MM1 concept, using a windows-based
PC program, the differences between relays is reduced
to the protection functions and their setting parameters.
Clear, user friendly MMI programs with transparent
setting parameters (e.g. using engineering units
directly) as well as on-line documentation save time

relays or control equipment of different complexity and

size to be built using common components. A truly
modular construction allows individual components to
be replaced or upgraded easily, without having to
change additional units. Considering a protection relay
for example, the major part of the hardware is for the
purpose of interfacing to the primary process
(intermediate current and voltage transformers,
tripping relays), and conventional signalling circuits.
The technology employed in these circuits is not

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changing as rapidly, indeed it is virtually the same as
was used for static equipment, even though the size of
some components has been reduced and their reliability
improved. The major part of a numeric relays
functionality is usually concentrated in processing
modules. It is here that the large technological
advances can be made, and these are the units that have
to be replaced if a relays performance is to Ik
upgraded. Peripheral units have a longer life-cycle and
do not have to be replaced.
The architecture of modern numeric protection and
control equipment is usually based on a bus structure.
Some manufacturers have developled equipment with a
high bit-rate serial bus arrangement, others have used a
parallel bus either based on their own design or on
existing international standards e.g. VME bus. Such a
bus is central to the design of an equipment platform,
since this determines to what extent equipment can I
x
upgraded. If the equipments processing power is
concentrated in one module and the amount of data
transferred between modules is niinimal (e.g. binary
input and output signals) then the bus arrangement is
uncritical. If however, numerical processing is
distributed over a number of modules such that data
transfer rates are high, great care has to be taken
during the design phase to ensure ithat the bus does not
turn out to be a bottleneck when the processing
capability is enhanced.
An example of such a hardware platform is shown
schematically in Fig. 1.

,%rial hus

Binary in-loutputs

Modules are designed for the following functions:

- analogue current and voltage inputs
- binary inputs/outputs
- remote binary inputloutputs
- signal processing
- isolating amplifiers
- serial communication
- star coupler connections
- auxiliary power supplies.
The number of module variants has been dramatically
reduced compared to previous designs. This leads to
simplified order handling and reduced costs for spareparts. For example, the analogue input module
combines 1 and 5 A rated currents respectively.
1OOV and 200V rated voltages. The binary input
module and auxiliary power supply covers a voltage
range of 48 - 250 V DC. Binary outputs with heavyduty contacts can be connected directly to the breaker
tripping coil.
All settings are performed using the MMI program
running on a PC, which means jumpers and switches
on modules have been eliminated.
0

A number of Application Specific Integrated Circuits

(ASIC) were developed for some of the previously
mentioned modules, in order to reduce component
space requirements and costs. Furthermore, future
procurement of these devices is secured, since the
manufacturer has ownership of the device design.
Serial interfaces for substation automation have an
impact on hardware. PC card (PCMCIA) slots on a
processing module allow protocol specific PC cards to
be inserted and enables easy connection to substation
automation systems.

Software

Serial hus

IEc1375
Power supply

-I k
L

Fig. 1 Platform hardware structure

Features which support equipment continuity are
described in the following:
A small number of universal casings including a
standard parallel bus to intlerconnect modules.
Customer specific functionality can be fulfilled l y
equipping a casing with analogue input and binary
inputloutputs modules as required.
A fast deterministic serial bus is incorporated (IEC1375), enabling the platform to be used as part of a
station automation or distributed protection system
114.

Since all protection and control functions are defined

by software, it is extremely important that the software
platform is designed and implemented according to a
modular concept, both at the application level
(protection and control functions and communication)
and at lower levels, which are invisible to the user.
Application software must be independent of the
hardware on which is to run, and of the software
interfacing to this hardware as well as from the runtime operating system. This is a prerequisite for the
portability of the software and in turn for the long-term
continuity of the platform.
Functions are held in a library and can be selected
once, or a number of times with different settings or
inputs and outputs. Three function types can be
identified, for protection control and monitoring
applications, as illustrated in Fig. 2.
Control and interlocking applications are realised using
a graphical function-plan language as covered by the
IEC 1131-3 standard. An editor and code compiler are
used to generate data, which is loaded into the
equipment via the MMI. This software allows signals

8
from all functions to be interconnected, including those
defined in function-plan blocks. This is one of the main
benefits of combining protection and control
applications in one equipment.
Protection functions are implemented using a highlevel programming language as opposed to functionplan language because the performance requirements
for protection functions are higher than for control, and
their functionality is more or less standardised rather
than customer specific.

bay units, thus eliminating conventional hard wiring,

e.g. for interlocking. Depending on the type of serial
bus (e.g. IEC-1375), this can be independent of the
station computer. Furthermore, the IBB can be
implemented redundantly, such that all bay units are
connected to both IBBs.
Transmission

IRB

Fig. 3 Basic bay equipment arrangements

5. PARTNERSHIP
I

Fig. 2 Platform software structure

Analogue and binary input signals from the process
have only to be configured once for the complete
equipment, and can thereafter be processed by any of
the selected functions. On the other hand, trip signals
from any protection function can be combined and
assigned to a common output [ 2 ] .
Prolongation of the equipment life-cycle is guaranteed
through portable software tools and compatible
microprocessor successors delivered from stable
manufacturers giving superior product support.
Attention must be paid to the selection of software
development tools, since they are closely linked with
the choice of programming
language and
microprocessor family.

4. CONCEPTS
CONTROL

FOR

PROTECTION

AND

Traditionally, separate equipment has been employed

for bay protection, bay control and station protection.
Redundancy can be realised by duplicating equipment
in main I and main I1 according to voltage level and
importance, Fig. 3a and Fig. 3c. Numerical technology
allows protection and control functions to be combined
in one unit avoiding unnecessary duplication of
hardware, Fig. 3b. Redundancy would be provided
Raving main protection and back-up control in one
equipment, respectively main control and back-up
protection in the other, as shown in Fig. 3d,
During recent years it has been possible to connect bay
equipment to the station computer in a master-slave
configuration, using an interbay bus (IBB). Today an
IBB allows peer-peer communication directly between

The rapid technological changes and growing

complexity of products and systems, demands an
increasingly close partnership between component
suppliers, software suppliers and manufacturers, and
manufacturers and power utilities.
The use of new technology also leads to quicker,
flexibler development and engineering of new
functions. For example, a number of utilities worked
together with this manufacturer in developing a
customer specific autoreclosure scheme to be used in
conjunction with main 1 and main 2 line protections,
including the co-ordination between them. This had
previously been implemented using static units,
requiring an engineering effort of six months. The
scheme, as well as additional enhancements, was
realised in two weeks using function blocks. The
complete functionality is divided between two function
blocks, now part of the function library, the first for fast
and the second for slow autoreclosure.
6. FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS
The future will bring yet more protection and control
functionality being integrated into one equipment, for
which new redundancy and back-up concepts will be
developed.
Some of the intelligence currently available at bay level
will migrate down to the process level, e.g. in remote
input/output units, non-conventional transducers,
actuators, sensors. These could include condition
monitoring functions to improve the management of
primary plant equipment. Process level units must also
be an integral part of the platform concept. They
require fast, secure serial communication facilities to
replace the hard-wiring still remaining in the station
(e.g. to C.T.s. V.T.s and circuit breakers). Optical

9
communication lends itself to this, since the
environment is harsher than at bay level.
It will be possible to use the information made available
from such units more widely than presently, either via a
bay unit or directly through a high-speed
communication network, such that the extent of vertical
and horizontal integration in the station will increase.
As a consequence, the amount of data available at any
one point in the system will also increase. This could be
used for protection techniques which could not be so
easily implemented up to now, e.g. multi-ended line
differential protection.
Process level signal processing may create a demand
for new signal-processing algorithms still in their
infancy, e.g. using artificial neural networks.
On-line access to plant condition monitoring
information or protection apparatus performance,
would be of great benefit to an asset manager.
As far as utilities are concerned, a consequence of a
numeric platform should be a move in the direction of
an "open system".

7. REFERENCES
1. D.M. Peck, B. Nygaard, K. Waddius, 1993
"A new numerical busbar protection system with bayoriented structure", Fifth International Conference on
Develo~mentsin Power System Protection,
IEE Publication No. 368, 228-23 1.

2. W. Wimmer, W. Fromm, P. Muller, F. Ilar, 1996

"Fundamental considerations on user-configurable
multifunctional numerical protection",
CIGRE Session, Paris 1996, Publicaition 34/202