Professional Documents
Culture Documents
review
IEC 61850: The new approach 7
Products for the standard 16
Verification and validation 23
Case studies of IEC 61850 38
Special Report
IEC 61850
Communication is more than ex-
changing data; it means globally
understandable information based on
syntax and semantic. This is behind
IEC 61850, the topic of this issue of
ABB Review Special Report.
development 16
record time
Pushing the limits
ABB product development based on the IEC 61850
standard
23 Verified and validated
ABB has its own system verification and validation
center
29 A testing environment
ABB’s comprehensive suite of software testing and
commissioning tools for substation automation systems
substations
Project 38
42
IEC 61850 at work
Five case studies
When two become one
experience IEC 61850 in combination with ABB’s award-winning
Extended Automation System 800xA is opening doors to
new and cost-effective solutions
53
IEC 61850 Edition 2
From substation automation to power utility automation
Reliable networking
Impact of modern communication technology on system
reliability
57 Seamless redundancy
Bumpless Ethernet redundancy for substations with
IEC 61850
smart grid
Contents 3
Editorial
Dear Reader,
Substations are key components of the power control the devices, and how conformity to
grid, facilitating the efficient transmission and the standard should be tested.
distribution of electricity. They play a vital role
in terms of monitoring and controlling power Following its introduction, the implementation
flows and provide the interconnection be- of IEC 61850 has advanced at a remarkable
tween generating facilities, transmission and pace. Perhaps never before has an industrial
distribution networks and end consumers. standard been accepted with such speed.
Substation automation systems make their Within two years of its release, a majority of
control and monitoring possible in real time the market was demanding IEC 61850 as the
and help maximize availability, efficiency, preferred communication protocol.
reliability, safety and data integration.
Peter Leupp It is increasingly being used for the integration
Head of Power Systems division For decades, the power sector was geo- of electrical equipment into distributed control
Member ABB Group
graphically split between two major standards systems in process industries. The fact that
Executive Committee
– IEC (International Electrotechnical Commis- new application areas, such as hydro and
sion) and ANSI (American National Standards wind power are being added is yet another
Institute). This often proved a deterrent to indication of its success.
the development of a global technology
offering. The bottom line is about how technology can
lower costs, improve reliability and enhance
IEC 61850 broke this deadlock. Since its efficiency. IEC 61850 has a proven track
publication in 2004, it has been embraced by record of deliverable benefits to both small
both the IEC and ANSI communities. The new and large utilities. Communication infrastruc-
standard was designed to: ture costs money to install, configure and
− Provide a single protocol for a complete maintain. But the savings that IEC 61850
substation delivers by way of substation design, installa-
− Implement a common format to describe tion, commissioning, and operation combined
the substation and facilitate object model- with new capabilities that are not practical or
ing of data required in the substation cost effective using legacy approaches,
Claes Rytoft − Define the basic services required to makes it a worthwhile investment.
Head of Technology transfer data using different communication
Power Systems division
protocols This special edition of ABB Review looks at
− Allow for interoperability between products this truly global and unifying standard from
from different vendors different angles and relates many of our
experiences based on the vast installed base
The standardization work commenced in the we have built during the years. We shall also
mid 1990s and continued for almost a attempt to take a peek into some possible
decade, involving more than 60 experts from future developments in this area.
utility and technology providers across the
globe. ABB was very much a part of this We hope you enjoy reading this dedicated
process and some of the contributors are special issue.
represented in this report.
S
KLAUS-PETER BRAND, WOLFGANG ubstation automation (SA) is The connection of the SA system with
WIMMER – The ability to cope with commonly used to control, the switchgear and instrument trans-
the natural migration of technology protect and monitor a substa- formers was still left to analog standards
combined with the need for interoper- tion [1]. However, over the such as 1 A and 3 A for current trans-
ability are just some of the reasons the years advances in electronics, informa- formers, and 110 V and 220 V for voltage
IEC 61850, an international standard tion and communications technology transformers and contact circuits for
that defines communication in and have brought about sweeping changes switchgear operations.
between electrical substation auto- in the way substations are operated. The
mation systems was developed. Using advent of software-based substation au- It took over 20 years before global forc-
it’s object-oriented hierarchical data tomation systems (hereafter referred to es, such as international suppliers and
model approach with high-level as SA systems) connected by serial links transnational utilities raised their voices
standardized semantics, IEC 61850 rather then rigid parallel copper wiring to request a solution, in the form of a
enables the abstract definition of data gradually became
items and services to not only specify the norm rather
what data or information needs to than the exception. Using it’s object-oriented hier-
be exchanged but also the mechanics Though successful
of how it is to be exchanged using and widely accept- archical data model approach
mainstream communication and
networking (mainly Ethernet) technolo-
ed, these systems
were based on ei-
with high-level standardized
gies. In addition, the cost benefits of ther the manufac- semantics, IEC 61850 enables
implementing IEC 61850 can already turers’ own propri-
be seen in the system design phase etary communica- the abstract definition of data
and experienced right through to the
commissioning and operating phases.
tion solutions or the
defined use of com-
items and services.
All of these factors help to explain the munication stan-
eagerness and speed with which the dards from other application domains, substation communication standard, to
first edition of the standard has been such as DNP3 or IEC 60870-5-104. overcome the interoperability prob-
accepted around the globe. These solutions made interoperability lem ➔ 1. While interoperability was a ma-
between devices from different suppliers, jor concern, it wasn’t the only one. Only
and sometimes even between different too aware of the dizzying pace at which
versions of devices from the same sup- technologies change, the authors of this
plier, an engineering nightmare which new standard, known as IEC 61850, also
could only be mitigated by expensive set about finding a way to create a “future
protocol conversion or re-engineering. -proof” standard that would be immune
ration description language (SCL). SCL * The process bus is not a must in IEC 61850 but only an option
Communication
communicated?
Part 3: General requirements
Mapping
Part 4: System and project management
SPLIT! Data model to the
communication stack Part 5: Communication requirements for
Communication functions and device models
technology:
Part 6: Configuration description language
How are the data
communicated? Selection for communication in electrical
ISO/OSI
ISO/OSI stack from the substations related IEDs
stack
Fast mainstream
Part 7-1: Principles and models
changes
Part 7-2: Abstract communication
service interface
Part 7-3: Common data classes
Part 7-4: Compatible logical node (LN)
munication service model). Therefore, physical device itself are dealt with by an classes and data classes
Part 8-1: Mapping to MMS and to
the standard is future-proof. The map- LN class named LPHD.
ISO/IEC 8802-3
ping of the data model to the communi- Part 9-1: Sampled values over serial
cation stack is also standardized in Only if a LN class for some function is unidirectional multidrop
IEC 61850 to ensure interoperable com- missing it may be substituted by generic point-to-point link
Part 9-2: Sampled values over ISO 8802-3
munication ➔ 2. LN classes that have restricted semantic
Part 10: Conformance testing
meaning. More demanding, however, is
The object-oriented data model the extension of LNs and data according
The basic data model structure defined to the strict and restrictive extension
in the IEC 61850 standard is application rules of the standard, including name
independent. However, depending on spaces as unambiguous references to
the scope of the standard, the object semantic meaning. These rules preserve All application
model classes, as issued in edition 1 of interoperability, even in cases where ex-
the standard ➔ 3 [2], are related to the tensions are required. functions, including
domain substation. Object models for
wind power [3], hydro power [4] and dis- For the functional identification of each
the data interfaces
tributed energy resources [5] were added data in the context of the switchyard, a to the primary
at a later date. All application functions, hierarchical plant designation system
including the data interfaces to the pri- shall be used for the designation of sub- equipment, are
mary equipment, are broken down into station objects and functions preferably
the smallest feasible pieces, which may according to IEC 61346 [6].
broken down into
communicate with each other and, more the smallest fea-
importantly, may be implemented sepa- The services of the data model
rately in dedicated IEDs. In IEC 61850, Interoperability requires the standardiza- sible pieces, which
these basic objects are called logical tion of not only the data objects but also
nodes (LNs). The class name of the LN the access to them. Therefore, standard-
may communicate
refers to the function the data objects
belong to. The data objects contained in
ized abstract services also belong to
IEC 61850. The most common ones
with each other
a LN may be mandatory, optional or con- include: and be implement-
ditional. The data objects themselves – Read: reading data such as the value
contain attributes 1, which may be seen of an attribute ed separately in
as values or detailed properties of the
data objects. This hierarchical data mod-
– Write: for example writing the value of
a configuration attribute
dedicated IEDs.
el is illustrated in ➔ 4. – Control: controlling switching devices
and other controllable objects using
Since the class names of LNs and the full standardized methods such as “select
names of data objects and attributes are before operate” or “direct operate”
standardized, they formally provide the – Reporting: for example, event driven
semantics of all exchanged values within reporting after value changes
the scope of IEC 61850. LNs may be – Logging: the local storage of time-
grouped into logical devices (LDs) with stamped events or other historical data
non-standardized names, and these LDs – Get directory: in other words, to read
are implemented in servers residing in out the data model (important part of
IEDs. The common properties of the self-description)
Command sequence
Logical device (LD) Breaker controller Control circuit
Selected for
Grouping
commands
Logical node (LN) XCBR (circuit breaker) Names Operate
standardized
Data
Operated
Selected state
Data (Object) Indication
Pos (position)
circuit
Properties Started for breaker
position
Indication
StVal (status value)
Attribute
Intermediate-state/off/on/bad-state
New position
Attribute q (quality)
good/invalid/reserved/questionable
Attribute
t (time stamp) Cmd
time of change termination
Value Enhanced security
ta tb tc ta tb tc
Coding Decoding
Application Application Application Application
Physical link (wire circuit) in the in the
function 1 function 2 function 1 function 2
stack stack
Physical Physical
device PD1 device PD1
Physical device PD1 Physical device PD2
dard [7] will allow high-precision time Edition 2 [8] of the standard scheduled
8 Mapping to the stack
synchronization also directly over Ether- for publication in 2010 will define proto-
net. cols for the connection of IEDs with
Data Model (Data and services)
two ports to two redundant communica-
The communication stack and tion systems or the formation of a ring Client-Server GOOSE Sampled values
mapping with redundant traffic in both ring direc-
Mapping
IEC 61850 has selected mainstream tions 3.
technology for the communication stack, 7
Network IED
IEDConfiguration
IEDConfiguration
configuration
Description ICD
level Description
Device description ICD
(ICD) Device in the system
Station Station Station capability
SCD per IED
HMI
level computer gateway
Device
Device (IED)
specific tool
Station Device
Device data
Devicedata
data Device
Device data
Devicedata
data
bus
Device selection
Stand-alone device
configuration
System
Bay Protection
Control Protection Control Protection configurator
level & control System
configuration System configuration description (SCD)
To allow the exchange of data between the system. The principles of engineering Klaus-Peter Brand
tools from different manufacturers, with SCL files are shown in ➔ 10. Wolfgang Wimmer
IEC 61850 introduces a basic engineer- ABB Substation Automation
ing process: Based on the system speci- As the entire IED data model is visible via Baden, Switzerland
fication and the description of the IEDs, the communication system, including klaus-peter.brand@ch.abb.com
the required device types are selected possible configuration and setting para- wolfgang.wimmer@ch.abb.com
and their formal description, in the form meter values, and all this can be de-
of an ICD file, is loaded into the system scribed in SCL, the SCD file is also a
Footnotes
medium usable by other applications in
1 The attributes carry the data values.
the life-cycle of the system [9], such as 2 Nowadays in communication technology, most
The station bus the archiving of the system configuration efforts and money are invested in Ethernet
technology. In fact Ethernet is now successfully
in a standardized form and the transfer
connects the IEDs of protection parameters to protection
competing with the traditional field busses.
3 Please refer to "Seamless redundancy " on
for protection, con- system configuration tools. It may be
used in simulation and testing tools or
page 57 of this issue of ABB Review.
helped ABB adopt the automation and later in several other industries, ABB was
faced with the challenge of adapting a variety of its prod-
IEC 61850 substation commu- ucts to the new technology in a relatively short time. This
was successfully accomplished in part due to the develop-
nication standard in record time ment of common components designed for use in a wide
variety of ABB products.
Common denominator 13
1 Interoperability demonstration between major vendors at the IEEE PSRC meeting in Sun
Valley in the United States in 2003
Engineering and
ttesting tools
ti too
A
BB was heavily involved in the
process of creating the IEC
61850 standard. As the stan-
dardization was in progress,
and in order to enable a fast time-to-mar- Relion ® 630 series 650 series IEDs 670 series IEDs
ket, the standard was already being im-
plemented in products in parallel to the
standard's finalization between 2002 and Already in its fourth edition, the guideline specification (MMS) and generic object
2004. In order to support the standardiza- serves as a good introduction to the oriented substation event (GOOSE) serv-
tion, interoperability tests were arranged soon-to-be-available second edition of ers and clients. More importantly, it hides
for these early implementations. As ABB the IEC 61850 standard and defines the the nitty-gritty details from the more ap-
believed that the standard would be a stepwise transition from the first edition plication oriented research and develop-
success, it realized that a wide variety of to the second. ment found in ABB’s products, thereby
products would need to support it. The allowing developers to concentrate on
company thus decided to implement re- Based on the principles defined in the providing application value to customers.
usable components right from the begin- application guideline, ABB started to Currently, the communication stack is in-
ning. The results of these activities were develop reusable
reported back to the IEC organization that components for a
used them to improve the clarity and qual- variety of products Currently, the IEC 61850 com-
ity of the standard. In addition, they were and tools in its
presented to the public at the IEEE PSRC portfolio. Two im- munication stack is integrated
meeting in Sun Valley, USA in 2003 ➔ 1
and at the Hannover Fair in April 2004.
portant compo-
nents are the com-
into more than 12 ABB prod-
munication stack ucts or product families, with
At that time, ABB outlined a clear step- and a set of librar-
wise strategy for the introduction of ies that handles a growing number of host
IEC 61850 into its solutions in its very
own internal IEC 61850 application
IEC 61850 object
models and con-
platforms set to follow suit.
guideline. This guideline defines the man- figurations ➔ 2.
datory subset of IEC 61850 services that tegrated into more than 12 ABB prod-
is supported by all ABB devices, it adds Communication stack ucts or product families, with a growing
additional ABB internal convention, and The IEC 61850 communication stack ➔ 3 number of host platforms set to follow
clarifies and details certain sections is effectively a piece of software that im- suit as IEC 61850 continues to be ac-
where the standard leaves room for in- plements the communication services for cepted by other industries. The benefits
terpretation. IEC 61850-8-1 manufacturing message of the IEC 61850 stack include portabili-
Configuration
SCL-parser
Layer 3 DB IEC 61850 SERVER / CLIENT
dealt with relatively quickly.
handler
− Version traceability. Keep track of the
distributed versions and version
Control Report IEC 61850 GOOSE FileXfer Setting Subst. Mod
Layer 2 dependencies, ie, which version of a
handler handler model H. handler handler handler handler handler
product contains which version of the
SNTP component.
Layer 1 Third-party MMS protocol SW
client − Backward compatibility of the component
is very important. If substation primary
IEC 61850-8-1 MMS/ IEEE802.3 GOOSE equipment can have a life expectancy of
between 30 and 40 years, it is an absolute
certainty that the substation automation
system will be extended and upgraded at
ty, and it runs on different real-time oper- XML-based substation configuration lan- least once during this time. As a conse-
quence, different versions of products and
ating systems as well as under Windows guage (SCL) comes into play. In addition,
tools need to co-exist in the same system.
for PC-based products and tools. the communication stack, which is a re- This puts certain requirements on the
usable component, needs configuration definition of the component’s software
information to enable such communica- interfaces and the way functionality is
Common denominator 15
Pushing the limits
ABB product development based
on the IEC 61850 standard
JANNE STARCK, STEVEN A. KUNSMAN – Since the publication participated in the standardization work from day one, and
of the first edition in 2004, the IEC 61850 communication as it was being developed it was decided to upgrade ABB’s
standard has practically become the de-facto standard in Relion® protection and control product family to support the
the context of substation automation. Almost from the IEC 61850 standard. By the time the standard came into
moment of its publication, intelligent electronic devices existence, ABB had already adopted a philosophy of “native
(IEDs) supporting IEC 61850 started to appear on the IEC 61850 implementation” in that the standard is imple-
market. However, for many of these IEDs, it soon became mented from the start in new product developments. Today,
clear that performance and flexibility were sacrificed in the ABB’s IEC 61850-based protection and control products are
race to get to the market first. ABB took a somewhat recognized as the number one choice for both utility and
different approach. Experts from within the company industrial power systems.
W
ith the introduction of the As the standard became better known, IEC 61850 implementation” philosophy,
IEC 61850 standard, the however, engineers realized the benefits which stated that from then on the stan-
world of substation auto- it provided presented them with an op- dard would be implemented in new prod-
mation has taken its big- portunity to rethink IED platform and ar- uct developments.
gest technology leap since the intro- chitecture development and introduce
duction of microprocessor-based pro- Native IEC 61850 implementation
tection and control devices in the early In a typical IEC 61850 native design, the
1980s. Even before its functionality of the IED must consider the
entire process, including specification
As soon as the standard was published, publication in and evaluation, system and device engi-
intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) sup-
porting IEC 61850 started to appear on
2004, ABB was neering, system commissioning, and op-
erations and maintenance. An IEC 61850
the market. The speed at which this hap- extending the limits native IED should provide:
pened was achieved by upgrading exist- – A full set of protection and control
ing IED platforms with an internal or ex- of IEC 61850 with data to SA systems, and to other
ternal gateway serving as a proxy to IEDs and third-party tools in compli-
the IEC 61850 Ethernet-based protocol.
its full implementa- ance with the defined data models
Because this approach left the IED archi- tion of the stan- and LNs to achieve a high level of
tecture, internal software and tools interoperability
unchanged, protocol conversion was dard in many of its – Fast communication and application
required to enable communication be- performance, which is critical when
tween existing IEDs and a modern
devices, tools and using generic object oriented substa-
IEC 61850-based substation. At the
time, the IEC 61850 standard was just
substation automa- tion events (GOOSE) peer-to-peer
communication for distributed
one of a number of protocols to expose tion (SA) systems. protection algorithms, and complex
the IED’s internal information, which was station and bay control interlocking
mapped to the IEC 61850 data models new conceptual ideas for substation au- schemes over Ethernet in the substa-
and logical nodes (LNs). The internal ar- tomation. ABB was taking this approach tion station bus
chitecture did not differ from other point even before the standard’s publication – Adherence to data modeling and
or register-based communication proto- by fully and genuinely implementing the substation configuration language
cols (eg, DNP V3.00 and MODBUS). standard in many of its devices, engi- (SCL) information available for system
While these early implementations result- neering and commissioning tools, and engineering, device configuration,
ed in a fast time-to-market, performance substation automation (SA) systems. In diagnostics and commissioning
and flexibility were sacrificed as a result. fact, ABB had already adopted a “native tools
– Ease of adaptation and be future proof fully base the IED’s functionality on the this is dependent on the product and in-
to evolving technologies enabled by data model and LNs as defined in the tended application ➔ 1. The supported
Ethernet and IEC 61850, for example, standard. As it now stands, protection standard data objects are documented
utilizing IEC 61850-9-2 sampled values and control algorithms, which provide in the mandatory model implementation
and microsecond-level time synchroni- the core IED functionality, are modeled conformance statement (MICS) docu-
zation accuracy via IEEE 1588 and implemented fully according to the ment.
IEC 61850 standard rules. In the new ar-
ABB’s Relion® protection and control chitecture, the data models are support- In the next stage, the standard LN and
product family was one of the first to un- ed directly in the protection and control its selected functionality are modeled
dergo the IEC 61850 transformation. The functions, making the LN data directly using the SCL, which describes the func-
products required a completely new plat- accessible from the communications tion structures, data objects and data
form architecture that would integrate services. With this approach the data types of an LN ➔ 2. With the defined
mapping and con- function structures according to the SCL,
version process is it is possible to automatically generate
ABB’s Relion® protection and not required, some- the skeleton of the application data ac-
thing that is a key cess functions (read, write) for the IED
control product family was factor in IED per- system software. These functions are in-
Physical I/O
Physical
Protection Change GOOSE RX Protection Change IEC
I/O Station bus
task detector task task detector 61850
Station IED
IED bus
PTOC
PTOC GOOSE TX
IED RREC
RREC task
DB Internal Internal CSWI
CSWI
bus bus
Mod
Mod
IED Beh
Beh
Health
Health
NamePlt
NamePlt
Loc
Loc
OpCntRs
OpCntRs
Pos
Pos
ctlVal
ctlVal
operTm
operTm
stVal
stVal Main Comm
q
q
stSeld
stSeld
pulseConfig
pulseConfig
the field. With standard-based data mod- ticular LN structure. After a protection
6 IEC 61850 event handling
eling, faster development of IED applica- task cycle completes, the IED process-
tion functions and communication inter- ing subsystem performs a signal com-
Physical
faces can be obtained. The improvements parison to identify new data in the I/O
Protection Change IEC 61850
are due to the LN structures, which are IEC 61850 connected datasets. In the task detector MMS stack
inherent in the protection application. IEC 61850 data model, most data-
IED
This therefore makes data access from change driven activities are based on the
PTOC
the IEC 61850 based SA system to the datasets, for example, event reporting RREC IED
IED's internal protection and control al- and GOOSE data publishing. The IED CSWI DB
gorithms very computationally efficient change detector identifies changes in Mod
Beh
and eliminates the need for time-con- the datasets and if a new value is detect- Health
NamePlt
suming protocol conversion processing. ed, the dataset and its connected func- Loc
tionality are triggered. In an IED using OpCntRs
Pos
The performance of a native GOOSE, the internal high-priority sub- ctlVal
Relion IED system executing the GOOSE function is operTm
stVal
IED architectures designed to support triggered. Subsequently, the modified q
stSeld
IEC 61850 from the start need to ensure data is sent as quickly as possible pulseConfig
that the delay in communicating control through the IED communication interface
signals, analog values and other time to the SA system station bus using a
critical data between the process and GOOSE multicast message. GOOSE
the IEDs is as small as possible. In tradi- multicast messages are unsolicited In IEC 61850-based
tional IEDs, the binary and analog signals broadcasts which do not require any cy-
were processed by the IED hardware I/O clical data polling mechanism. Data architectures, con-
subsystem. In IEC 61850-based archi- structures used in GOOSE include direct
tectures, conventional wiring has been access to the IED internal database, and
ventional wiring
eliminated and these signals are trans- because the internal data model exactly has been eliminat-
mitted and received via the communica- matches the IEC 61850 standard, no
tions interface. Thus, the communication data conversions are required ➔ 4. ed and binary and
interface in the new IEC 61850-based
IEDs must be very efficient at processing In the same way, the IED’s IEC 61850 na-
analog signals are
the communication data. tive design yields high-performance sub-
scribing GOOSE datasets from other
transmitted and
The fast GOOSE performance of a Relion IEDs in the local sub-network. As GOOSE received via the
IED is critical in a native IEC 61850 im- messages are processed in the data link
plementation to allow control signal pro- layer in the Ethernet stack, this does not communications
cessing as if it were a traditional hard-
wired IED. During IED algorithm execution
require additional processing through the
TCP and IP layers. This type of Ethernet
interface.
or task cycle, the data values of a pro- communication is very fast since the data
tection function (eg, the protection start is retrieved directly from the IED commu-
in PTOC) can change if an overcurrent is nications hardware interface. The IED’s
detected on a feeder, and this in turn up- GOOSE processing capabilities can de-
dates the database supporting the par- code the message in less than 1 ms and
ration tool, the system engineer can add therefore capable of interoperating with
GOOSE links and if required, customize other systems offering IED protocol ser- All Relion IEDs have
the details of the single-line diagram and vices and which have SCL files exported
event datasets. The system engineer ex- from the IED tool. A typical IEC 61850
been tested and
ports the completed SCD file back to the
relay setting tool where the IED's appli-
certificate from KEMA is shown in ➔ 8. certified according
cation configuration is finalized. To date the IEC 61850 standard confor- to the IEC 61850
mance test does not test IED perfor-
In both top-down and bottom-up system mance. However, part 5 of the standard standard; for end
engineering processes, the final result is
an SCD file which is needed for the con-
defines, for example, a performance
class P1, type 1A “Trip” for protection
users and manu-
figuration of substation SCADA systems purposes using horizontal GOOSE com- facturers, this
and gateways. The substation section of munication. According to this definition,
the SCD file can be used as an informa- data exchange times between IEDs must means that no non-
tion source to create the substation sin-
gle-line diagram, which in turn minimizes
not exceed 10 ms in distribution automa-
tion applications.
conformities to the
any additional work needed for the de- standard have been
sign of the substation’s graphical dia- Two IEDs, the REF630 and REF615, both
gram. In this way, the SA system greatly members of the Relion family, were in- found in the behav-
benefits from the self-descriptive feature
of the IEC 61850 defined SCL.
stalled in ABB’s UniGear medium-voltage
switchgear cubicles and tested accord-
ior of the IEDs.
ing to the procedures stated in the
Testing and using Relion IEDs IEC 62271-3 standard 2 ➔ 9. This stan-
The capability of the native IEC 61850 dard, applicable to switchgear and con-
implementation and the IED design have trol gear, specifies equipment for digital
been thoroughly tested as part of the de- communication with other parts of the
velopment validation – as have products substation and its impact on testing.
already on the market – at the ABB UCA Specifically, the standard defines perfor-
level B certified System Verification test mance test procedures with reference to
Center (SVC) 1. The most important test the IEC 61850 performance classes and
is the basic IEC 61850 conformance test. the requirements which the IED must ful-
All Relion IEDs have been tested and fill for these applications.✎
certified according to the procedures de-
fined in part 10 of the IEC 61850 stan- The test results more than proved the
dard. For end users and manufacturers, concept. In fact the functional and per-
the certificate states that no nonconfor- formance test results have been nothing
mities to the standard have been found short of impressive. The Relion IEDs ful-
in the behavior of the IEDs. The IEDs are filled the performance class defined by
ABB continues to network layout (ie, conducting equip- Raleigh, United States
ment, objects) is known from the SCD steven.a.kunsman@us.abb.com
explore advanced file. Together with the actual positions
beyond what is data provided by the IEDs. standard and defines different levels of certified
IEC 61850 test centers. Independent labs are
now possible. And last but not least, the IEC 61850
generally classed as level A test centers while
manufacturer test labs, like ABB SVC, are
LNs allow the implementation of distrib- certified as level B test centers. For more
uted functions, which will no doubt lead information on SVC, please also read "Verified
and validated" on pages 23–28 of this ABB
To explain further, major features of the to new applications in the not too distant Review Special Report
standard that are used include the self- future. 2 The tests were witnessed and reported by
describing IEDs and the standardized KEMA.
system verification established a system verification and validation center (SVC), to verify
correct implementation. In this test center, each and every product,
and vaildation center system component, application and tool is tested in a real-life system
environment to demonstrate its specified functionality and performance.
Complete systems are verified to ensure that they fully meet the require-
ments in terms of communication, integration, functionality, security and
performance.
T
he purpose and scope of SVC various technical committees. Although The editor of the Testing Quality Assur-
is summarized in ➔ 1. The cen- the group does not write standards as ance Program (QAP) was also the editor
ter does not only test individu- such, its activities affect the definition of of Part 10, “Testing Requirements”, of
al devices, but also tests their standards as well as the implementation the IEC 61850 document. Furthermore,
integration into larger systems and fur- of testing and product certification pro- many members of TC57/WG10 are on
thermore provides support and under- grams. One focus has been on the “Com- UCAIug’s Technical Subcommittee for
standing of the standard, leading to its munication Networks and Systems in the Resolution of 61850 Issues (Tissues).
improved integration and implementa- Substations" section of IEC 61850. The group works closely with standards
tion. organizations to support technology
transfer, resolution of issues and assists
Verification versus validation Each and every users in the testing and implementation
The relative concepts of verification and of products. One major focus of UCAI-
validation are sometimes a cause of con- product, system ug’s charter is the Testing Quality Assur-
fusion.
component, appli- ance Program (QAP).
Verification means: cation and tool is A recognized IEC 61850 conformance test
– Is the product being built according to center
the original specification? tested in a real-life UCAIug has qualified SVC as an
– Are the specified requirements being IEC 61850 test facility and competence
met?
system environ- centre. SVC is thereby officially qualified
ment to demon- to test and certify the IEC 61850 confor-
Verification testing should thus be about mity of products and confer the users’
the product’s conformance to the origi- strate its specified group label to them.
nal specification.
functionality and SVC is represented on UCA’s IEC 61850
In SVC verification, all tests performed
assure the product accords with the de-
performance. testing subcommittee. This strengthens
the center’s ability to support upcoming
fined substation automation require- IEC 61850 test procedures and keeps it
ments. These requirements are defined UCAIug complements the activities of informed about UCA- and IEC-driven
and reviewed by a group of experts ap- international standards organizations. changes regarding IEC 61850 testing.
proximately once per year and have to For example, UCAIug works closely with
be implemented in each ABB product. IEC. The convener of IEC TC57/WG10
(IEC 61850) is on several UCAIug com- Footnotes
mittees and is an advisor to their board. 1 UCA: Utility Communications Architecture
Interoperable
Interoperatbility
profile
– ABB-products
– System solutions – 3 rd party products
(Control, Protection, SAS) in ABB systems
– System engineering tools and processes – Tools
– Definition of system functionality
IEC 61850 conformance Company A profile
Various profiles
from different
products may
conform to the
standard but may
still not be totally
interoperable.
Beyond conformance testing: The fact that standard products from dif-
system verification and validation ferent suppliers or different products
Once a product has passed conformance from the same supplier conform to the
testing, it can be accepted for formal standard is in itself no guarantee for their
system verification and validation. interoperability. The reason for this is that
communication profiles can differ.
Interoperability
Interoperability testing is neither part of A communication profile defines the
the scope of the standard nor is it tested mandatory subset of a standard con-
by all UCAIug accredited test centers or sisting of the selected options that
are implemented.
Thus various pro-
An interoperability test looks files from different
products may con-
at the dynamic interaction form to the stan-
of at least two IEDs in a sub- dard but may still
not be totally in-
station automation system teroperable ➔ 3.
All configurations are based on system unit solutions to ensure "most common use" of the IEDs/SAS
required. For example, one vendor might and XML) is also imporant here. As a
The goal of implement only GOOSE 2 and a second side effect, this testing also permits the
vendor might implement only GSSE 3. system configuration tool and its inter-
IEC 61850 is the Both devices would pass conformance face with the product tools to be veri-
Device type test Integration test System test Factory test FAT Site test SAT
System
test
System Integration tests
are finalized
successfully
– Verification of products with a clear
focus on IEC 61850 system aspects
– Tools and their interaction in the
Release for
use in
customer
Several hundred
engineering process (exchange
IEC 61850 SCL files)
projects
IEDs can be simu-
– Verification of the system under
normal operation, avalanche and
fault conditions (evaluation
lated in the SVC,
IEC 61850 system performance)
– System-security testing. helping identify the
Manufac- Product All tests up to SW has dedicated manufacturing test Product limitations of SA
turing Test system test available for
finalized
successfully
customer
projects
Systems.
ends with its integration test ➔ 5. The
conformance test is the type test relating
to standards such as IEC 61850. The
successful passing of type tests is the
prerequisite to begin integration testing.
Integration testing involves testing the
new product in a small and fixed test
system. Type tests and integration tests
are performed (as a minimum) by the
product supplier and (if applicable and
requested) by an independent test au-
thority. Normally, the conformance of the
IED is confirmed by the issuing of a cer-
tificate. In addition, routine tests or man-
ufacturing tests performed in the pro-
duction chain ensure a constant quality
of delivered devices.
Factory test Customer All tests up to Configuration of the full system The substation The SVC is an active member of UCA
project system test Project assembled and pre-tested automation
finalized especially regarding project specific system is inter national users group and the
successfully and parts; parts not available in the factory running as IEC 61850 testing subcommittee. In
products available are simulated on IEC 61850 network. specified
for projects Tests performed according to the 2007, SVC extended the test centre to
agreed test plan.
fulfill new upcoming requirements. Be-
sides the verification and validation of
Factory Customer All factory tests System test witnessed by the customer Clearance for
acceptance project are finalized shipping, ABB products against IEC 61850-8-1,
test (FAT) successfully commissioning
and SAT
activities were extended to third party
IED’s, redundancy concepts, and
Site test Customer FAT finalized Complete system goes into operation, The complete IEC 61850-9-2.
project successfully. fully functional including all connections substation
All system to switchgear and remote systems and automation
components are work places system is Today the SVC test system comprises a
installed. Last adaptations if needed running as
specified considerable quantity of relays from ABB
as well as from several other manufactur-
Site Customer System Complete system will be witnessed by System handed ers. In addition, several hundred IEDs
acceptance project commissioned the customer. over to the
test on-site customer, incl can be simulated, helping identify the
(SAT) final SCD file!
limitations of SA Systems in terms of ar-
chitecture, engineering processes, engi-
neering tools, system functionality, sys-
tem security and performance.
tem test should also be part of the R&D site tests are carried out to prepare the
testing sequence and conformance test- system for the site acceptance test (SAT).
ing. However, as explained above, both The testing sequence for customer proj-
the content of IEC 61850-10 and the de- ects consists of project-related tests,
tailed test procedures defined by the based on the specification for the system
UCAIug only focus on IED (single prod- ordered. Such tests are performed by
uct) testing. Today’s conformance certifi- the system supplier or system integrator
cates are thus no guarantee for interop- and witnessed by the customer. These
erability from a system perspective ➔ 6. tests confirm that the delivered individual
SAS is running as specified ➔ 8.
In summary: SVC takes care of that part
of system testing not covered by the pre- Successful operation of the test center
vious quality assurance steps. Following the planning and build-up
phase, by mid 2005, SVC was ready for
Testing of configurations specific to operation. In 2006, the center was quali-
customer-projects fied by the UCAIug for use as an Stephan Gerspach
The customer-project testing sequence ➔ 7 IEC 61850 test facility and competence Peter Weber
starts with the factory test. This is a proj- centre. SVC was the first manufacturer’s ABB Substation Automation Systems
ect-related test that prepares the cus- test lab in the world to earn this level of Baden, Switzerland
tomized system for the factory accep- qualification. It meets the high quality stephan.gerspach@ch.abb.com
tance test (FAT). Following the installation, levels set out for common test proce- peter.weber@ch.abb.com
T
he IEC 61850 standard is built the IEC 61850 system integration pro-
commissioning of IEC 61850-based mainly on known technologies cess was needed.
substation automation systems intro- such as extensible markup
duce new challenges and demands language (XML), Ethernet, ABB’s approach, taken during the initial
for advanced software applications. manufacturing messaging specification phase of the introduction of IEC 61850,
ABB recognized this at a very early (MMS) and transmission control proto- was to take the existing expert tools and
stage of the introduction of IEC 61850 col/Internet protocol (TCP/IP), each of identify clear functional gaps in them.
and redesigned the engineering and which have a number of well established This information was then used to de-
testing tool landscape to serve these software tools to handle them. Why then velop (and afterwards continuously im-
purposes. was it initially quite challenging to deal prove) a comprehensive suite of software
with IEC 61850-based systems? testing tools for communication, and
protection and control application spe-
The crux of the matter lies in the ap- cialists in the field of substation automa-
proach taken. IEC 61850 seamlessly tion.
combines the un-
derlying technology
components and ABB developed the Integrated
application aspects
from an integral Testing Toolbox, a software
system point of
view. Existing tools,
tool suite used to manage and
however, were de- support the IEC 61850 sys-
signed to focus on
specialized single tem integration process and
tasks, for example
communication
which has proven invaluable
analysis, and leave in many turnkey SA projects.
out any substation
automation appli-
cation aspects, and are therefore no lon- With the benefit of active participation in
ger capable of addressing today’s chal- the IEC 61850 standardization group on
lenges. To overcome this problem, it was its side combined with its in-depth knowl-
evident a new generation of software edge and experience in designing and
tools to efficiently manage and support building substation automation (SA) sys-
A testing environment 29
1 Typical contents of a system 2 Application areas for analytical and 3 Typical features of a diagnosis
configuration description (SCD) file diagnostic tools and analysis tool
– Description of complete substation – The use of project specific data (SCD file)
topology and primary equipment for configuration
− All protection and control devices − Establishing an online communication
(servers), and station level automation connection to the IEDs using either static
system (clients) including the standardized or dynamic configured data sets and
data models of their functionality control blocks for reports
− All communication addresses IEC 61850-8-1 − Visualizing the health of the running system
− Complete horizontal and vertical data-flow − Checking data consistencies and
within the system configuration revisions against the SCD file
− Relationship between SA functionality − Analyzing and verifying running
and the primary equipment applications
IE
IEC 61850-9-1 − Decoding Ethernet traffic to the substation
automation (SA) domain language based
on the SCD file
− Showing functional (system-oriented) or
product-oriented addressing of logged data
tems, ABB developed the Integrated plete SA system ➔ 1. For creation and diagnosis and analysis of the running
Testing Toolbox (ITT), a tool suite which maintenance, an IEC 61850 system con- applications.
has proven invaluable in over 900 turnkey figuration tool is required.
SA projects delivered by the company. Conformance testing
From the system point of view, the inter- One very important aspect of IEC 61850
From the very beginning, ABB’s approach faces for each device (client or server) system integration is the selection of
was to build a tool suite that would hide connected to the system are described standard complaint intelligent electronic
the complexity of the technology compo- in this file. This makes the complete SCD devices (IEDs). Compliant in the sense
nents IEC 61850 is built on and focus on file the central part of the IEC 61850 sys- that all selected IEDs have been tested
displaying application relevant data only. tem documentation, which makes it in- to ensure that they conform to the
While having an in-depth knowledge of teresting to be used for all future activi- IEC 61850 standard and are officially
the technologies was necessary to ties performed on the SA system, such certified by a test center which itself is
achieve this, the complexity lay in creat- as testing, maintenance and extensions. accredited by the UCA international us-
ing the interfaces that would enable the The engineer no longer needs to worry ers group. This certification covers the
application and display layer of the test- about error-prone manual configuration verification of the data model, the stan-
ing tool to be tailored to project specific of the testing and analysis tool environ- dardized documentation and a black-box
configuration data. test of all the communication services
the IED supports. The conformance test
Substation configuration language ABB’S approach gives a minimum guarantee that the se-
(SCL) lected IEDs will interoperate with other
One of the greatest achievements of the was to build a tool certified devices if they are configured
IEC 61850 standard and one of the
things that differentiates it from other
suite that would and loaded correctly within the system.
This prerequisite relieves the testing tools
communication standards was the intro- hide the complexity from research and development related
duction of the substation configuration bits and bytes analysis even more.
language (SCL). SCL makes it possible of the technology
to create files that are used for the ex- Revealing inconsistencies
change of configuration data (eg, stan-
components There are often situations, specifically
dardized object models and data flow IEC 61850 is built during the testing and commissioning
configurations of devices in a system) phase of an IEC 61850 based system,
between engineering tools. Several file on and focus on where temporary inconsistencies due to
types have been defined in IEC 61850, stepwise integration, the configuration of
and the content of each type depends
displaying applica- systems parts or simply human error re-
on the role of a specific tool (e.g., system
configuration tool or device configuration
tion relevant data sult in a situation where distributed func-
tions do not interoperate. Debugging can
tool) that it is created for and the different only. be very time consuming and often re-
evolution phases of the system integra- quires expert know-how, which is not al-
tion process. ways available. To handle such situations
ment; all he has to do is simply import ABB has developed a tool called the
The system configuration description the project-specific SCD file into the test- ITT600 SA Explorer. It simplifies the diag-
(SCD) file is one such file type, and is de- ing tool. This in turn focuses the effort to nosis and troubleshooting of IEC 61850-
fined as the master document of a com- where it is most needed, on functional based SA systems by combining a set of
A testing environment 31
6 Horizontal GOOSE communication between multiple IEDs with ITT600 7 Application areas for simulation tools
IEC 61850-8-1
IEC 61850-8-1
IED simulation
IEC 61850-9-2
IEC 61850-9-2
Merging unit
simulation
tribute critical data and this integration, both in selected for simulation
− Tailored scripts for the simulation of simple
the configuration
demands more advanced tools and IEDs
applications, such as control applications
double command blocking
from different sup-
integration and verification pliers, emphasize Note: Receiving IEDs and clients cannot see
processes. the challenge even any difference between simulated and real
data on the bus
the more.
scribers of the now missing data on the Evidently, the strong trend toward the
bus must be operated in an interlock- use of more modern communication
override mode. This is because applica- technology to distribute mission critical
tions running on the IEDs usually refuse data demands very advanced integration
operations with obsolete data that have and verification processes. To manage
not been refreshed in time by the pub- these challenges, engineering, testing
lisher. Maintenance concepts for such and commissioning tools have been de-
situations must be considered in order to veloped which incorporate all the possi-
ensure that the remaining healthy or un- bilities offered by the IEC 61850 stan-
affected parts of the system continue to dard. They have been proven to facilitate
work undisturbed. This type of situation and ensure the high standards of ABB's
can typically occur during the testing and project execution.
commissioning phase where the sequen- Tetsuji Maeda
tial adding of bays – including their con- ABB Substation Automation Systems
trol and protection IEDs – to an energized Baden, Switzerland
system should not lead to major re-engi- tetsuji.maeda@ch.abb.com
RTU
Copper
event recording cable 1
protection
Gateway/ SAS Gateway/ SAS
protocol conv. protocol conv.
Station level
SCADA-distribution, metering
Sensors &
Bay cubicle Copper cables Bay cubicle Copper cables Bay cubicle actuators
disconnecting function was still required creases gradually over time the require-
but more for maintenance of overhead ment for a secondary system to support
lines and power transformers. This led to both CIT and non-conventional instru-
the development of two types of solu- ment transformers (NCIT) during this
tions with disconnect switches (DSs) in- transition period will become apparent.
S
ince the first substations were tegrated with the CB function. One was This requirement is obvious when ex-
built more than 100 years a hybrid (PASSTM), which has a separate tending substations, since the new bays
ago, there has been tremen- DS design in the same gas compartment will contain NCITs and existing bays will
dous development of both the as the CB. Another one was the discon- contain CITs.
primary equipment (switchgear, power necting CB (DCB), which uses the same
transformers, etc.) and the secondary contact for both breaking and discon- The greatest physical impact of process
equipment (protection, control and me- necting functions. Due to the reduced bus will be on AIS with live tank CBs or
tering, etc). maintenance of CBs and the protection DCBs, where the measuring transform-
by SF6 gas of the DSs’ primary contacts ers can be integrated in the CB or DCB,
ABB has been engineering and con- from external pollution, the availability allowing the substation’s footprint to be
structing substations from their very be- and reliability of AIS substations using reduced substantially. For hybrid and GIS
ginning and has delivered more substa- hybrid or DCB has increased. Further- solutions, the footprint reduction will be
tions than any other supplier. The first more the footprint of AIS substations us- less significant as the insulation distance
substations deployed had air-insulated ing this technique can now be reduced between primary and secondary equip-
switchgear (AIS). The development focus to about 50 percent. ment is already reduced by the use of
for AIS was on circuit breaker (CB) tech- SF6 gas. However, the process bus will
nology that would increase reliability and The latest step in substation develop- enable the use of non conventional volt-
reduce maintenance. In 1965 ABB deliv- ment comes with the introduction of the age transformers (VTs) making equip-
ered the world’s first substation with gas- standard IEC 61850-9-2 for the process ment much lighter (a traditional VT is
insulated switchgear (GIS). With GIS the bus interface. For
footprint of substations can be reduced primary equipment,
by about 60 percent, by housing all pri- this means con- The latest step in substation
mary conductors within earthed SF6 gas- ventional instru-
insulated aluminum tubes. Over the years ment transformers development comes with the
new generations of GIS have been devel-
oped, providing today’s GIS with, among
(CIT) that use cop-
per, iron and insu-
introduction of the standard
other things, a considerably smaller foot- lation material pro- IEC 61850-9-2 for the pro-
print (for more detail see “Compact and viding analogue
reliable” on pages 92-98 of ABB Review values (1 A, 110 V) cess bus interface.
issue 1/2009). can be exchanged
for fiber-optic sensors that send a pro- quite heavy). Further, the manufacturing
Due to the reduced maintenance of CBs, cess bus digital signal via fiber optic ca- time can be reduced since all adapta-
new substation design principles bles to metering, protection and control tions can be done with software and the
emerged for AIS in the late 1990s. The equipment. As the use of sensors in- hardware can be standardized.
The introduction of the process bus will IEC 61850 also includes a new standard Process Bus – connecting the
also mean changes regarding interfaces for the communication between the high- last mile
for CBs and DSs. All signals, digital and voltage apparatus and IEDs, the so called The widely accepted standard IEC 61850
analogue, to and from the control room process bus using the 9-2 profile and defines the complete communications
can now be run via process bus in a few communications architecture. The pro- architecture for station and process bus
optical fibers instead of tons of copper cess bus has high requirements on band- to ensure a high level of device interoper-
cables. The CBs and DSs will include I/O width since it will be used to transfer ability. The standard’s data models and
electronics for signal transfer from opti- continuous sampled values from the pri- communication services are the key to
cal to electrical and vice versa. mary process. interoperability between multi-vendor
substation protection, control devices
Secondary side developments On the secondary equipment side the (IEDs), and station computers (gateways)
The digital (r)evolution has provided tech- most obvious physical change will be via Ethernet. A substation’s secondary
nical solutions for substations. Digital from copper cables to fiber optic cables. system with station and bay level devices
technology was first implemented in sub- The massive reduction of secondary ca- communicating over the so-called sta-
stations in the 1970s, providing commu- bling will mean reduced cost for cables tion bus has been widely adopted by
nication channels from the substations utilities and vendors ➔ 2.
to control centers ➔ 1.
The widely accept- The cyclic exchange of sampled values,
During the early 1990s, with the in- ie, between NCIT and IED devices for
creased capacity and speed of comput- ed IEC 61850 protection functions and other purposes
ing and communications technology, is also defined in the standard (part 9-2).
digital protection and control devices,
standard defines The interconnection between sensors,
the so called IEDs (intelligent electronic the complete com- actuators, protection and control devic-
devices) were installed in substations. es, is referred to as "process bus" (lower
Digital communication between the IEDs munications archi- part ➔ 3). This means that not only ana-
was introduced using station bus with log data, but also status information from
protocols that differed between manu-
tecture for station primary switchgear to IEDs, as well as
facturers ➔ 1. and process bus to command signals from IEDs to the pri-
mary switchgear can be exchanged. This
With the introduction of the IEC 61850 ensure a high level interconnection between sensors, actua-
standard, substations are moving into a tors, protection and control devices, is
new era regarding communications. All of device interoper- referred to as the “process bus” (lower
manufacturers can adapt their products
to the same communication model and
ability. part ➔ 2). A vendor-agreed subset under
the umbrella of the utility communication
protocol, making it possible for different architecture (UCA) foundation has been
manufacturers IEDs to “talk with each and associated equipment such as cable in place since 2004. This subset speci-
other” and thus interoperate on the same trenches and installation material. Man fies the exchange of sampled values and
station bus, replacing all previous propri- hours for installation and testing on-site is called IEC 61850-9-2LE (light edition).
etary protocols. will be reduced and more thorough test- Today, pilot projects utilizing the process
increasing number well underway. spread commercial adoption has not yet
taken place.
of secondary retro- Modern substations, both new installa-
tions as well as the increasing number of Interoperability
fit or extension secondary retrofit or extensions installa- Both the communication architectures
tions will see both sensor and conven- (9-2, 9-2LE) and the steady-state behav-
installations will tional instrument transformer technolo- ior of sensors are defined (IEC 60044).
see both sensor gies side-by-side. The same applies for The transient signal response of merging
handling signaling commands and posi- units has not yet been standardized. The
and conventional tion indications to and from primary latter defines the extent (in terms of angle
switchgear. and amplitude) to which a merging unit
instrument trans- output signal is allowed to differ from its
former technolo- Realizing the process bus
With the process bus, new devices such
corresponding input signal. This is es-
sential since protection algorithms and
gies side-by-side. as merging units (MU) for the optical sen- the corresponding data acquisition hard-
sors, as well interface units for conven- ware and filtering has so far been “inter-
tional instrument transformers, are need- connected” within one device, the IED.
ed. In addition switchgear controllers for Now those parts are split up into differ-
circuit breakers and disconnectors ent physical devices that can be supplied
(“Breaker IEDs”) will be introduced. from different vendors, and therefore a
Those devices can be seen as conver- transient signal response standard is es-
sion “endpoints” to and from the primary sential for correct functioning. A newly
process to the secondary equipment. formed working group with Cigré (B5.24)
is addressing signal interoperability and
A merging unit, as the name implies, results are expected during 2011.
merges various input signals into one
digital output signal, eg, three phase Process bus communication architectures
sensors can have one common electron- Several different process bus architec-
ic unit, which transform the optical sig- tures exist. In fact, depending on factors
nals from the sensors into digital sampled such as distance (location of MUs and
values and make them available on the IEDs), communication capabilities (single
process bus. port, multiple ports), available network
bandwidth, availability considerations or
A switchgear controller contains elec- communication topologies, such as
tronics for handling binary input and out- point-to-point, star or ring configurations
put signals (signal and power contacts). the process bus architecture can vary
The device will communicate status in- considerably. Both utilities and vendors
Case studies 39
starting point and permitted ABB to
Portuguese quickly identify the required solution.
transmission The Lagoaça substation uses a system
substations based on a decentralized Ethernet ring.
The main products from ABB are:
– MicroSCADA Pro for local HMI, and
REN is the main Portuguese utility for automated sequences
electrical energy transmission. ABB – COM500i as Gateway, for commu-
supplied the utility’s first IEC 61850 nication with network control center
system, installing it at the 400/220 kV – IED's 670 for control and protection
Lagoaça substation. The installation units
is responsible for some of the most – REB 500 Systems for busbar – Remote access via RX1000 routers
important interconnection points with protection from RUGGEDCOM
the Spanish grid on the 400 kV voltage
level. Third party products used were: The adoption of IEC 61850 was
– Switches and routers from clearly beneficial. It allows both
Of all the benefits of migrating RUGGEDCOM customers and vendors to retain
substation automation systems to the – Meinberg GPS servers for SNTP extensive functional freedom in their
new standard, the customer was time synchronization definitions and philosophies. It also
especially focused on one in particu- – Computers with no-moving parts assures independence from single
lar: standardizing the system architec- running Windows XP Embedded suppliers as well as cost savings in
ture, ie, using the same network platform both engineering and maintenance.
topology and overall arrangement – KVM switches and fallback switches
independently of the supplier. from Black-Box
– Industrial computers from Advan-
ABB brought much experience into tech, for remote access and
this project that it had built up in engineering stations. Carlos Caetano
previous deliveries to the customer. – RTU servers and local-event ABB Substation Automation Systems
The previous platform may have been printing system from SYCOMP Paço de Arcos, Portugal
different, but marked an excellent Germany (REN mandatory). carlos.caetano@pt.abb.com
Case studies 41
When two
become one
IEC 61850 in combination with ABB’s award-winning
Extended Automation System 800xA is opening doors
to new and cost-effective solutions.
JOHAN HANSSON, STEFAN BOLLMEYER – The successful process and power generation plant automation. These
introduction of the IEC 61850 standard some six years ago plants are controlled and monitored from a central control
has already brought huge benefits to power distribution and room in which there are typically two different systems
substation automation in terms of scalability, interoperability, deployed; one for process control and the other for monitor-
safety and data management. Even though it was drafted by ing and controlling the electrical system. Plant operators, in
substation automation domain experts, it is by no means their quest to reduce complexity and optimize efficiency have
exclusively reserved for that domain alone. In fact, IEC 61850 been actively seeking solutions that overcome the separation
is more than capable of operating in other areas, such as in of the systems and the extra costs associated with it.
T
he integration of field instru- trol system, IED monitoring and control is IEC 61850 integration in System 800xA
ments into process control ap- usually implemented by a separate sub- The combination of ABB’s Extend-
plications is based on a limited station automation (SA) system while ed Automation System 800xA with
set of industry standards that connectivity between the electrical sys- IEC 61850 not only addresses the above-
provide harmonized access to process tem and process control is limited to the mentioned end-user demands, but it also
data and diagnostics. For electrical most essential data, eg, for interlocking gives greater synergy and flexibility to
equipment, however, a multitude of dif- purposes. Although only a limited set of fully integrated plant operations.
ferent, often proprietary communication signals is selected for data exchange, to-
protocols is deployed. Therefore electri- day’s practice for this type of electrical Introduced in December 2003, System
cal systems, especially those composed and control system interfacing, such as 800xA provides a scalable solution that
of equipment from different vendors, are hardwiring or Modbus connectivity, still extends traditional process control by in-
often characterized by multiple different requires significant hardware and engi- corporating: safety; discrete logic and
interfaces, a broad variety of engineering neering efforts. The presence of two dif- sequence control; production manage-
tools, protocol converters and gate- ferent systems also increases costs be- ment; information management; smart
ways. cause, for example, different spare parts instrumentation; asset management; and
and a duplicated effort to ensure integra- document management. Based on As-
Process control systems typically do not tion with enterprise level systems are re- pect Object technology, System 800xA
offer built-in support for those communi- quired ➔ 1. is capable of adopting data models from
cation protocols and data models. And different disciplines and making them
because of this significant engineering To help plant operators overcome these available in a harmonized way through a
and adaptation efforts need to be made expensive complexities, IEC 61850, with singular virtual database environment.
on a project-by-project basis to make its standardized communication proto-
the increasing amount of information, cols and data model, in combination with The integration of IEC 61850 into System
which modern intelligent electronic de- ABB’s award-winning Extended Automa- 800xA supports both generic object ori-
vices (IEDs) provide, available to a moni- tion System 800xA is opening doors to ented substation events (GOOSE) and
toring and control system. Nowadays to new and cost-effective solutions. manufacturing message specification
mitigate the impact on the process con- (MMS) protocol options described in the
E.ON integrates substation and For substation automation, the IEDs are
process automation the most critical devices in the plant in The use of
E.ON Vattenkraft, a subsidiary of E.ON that they provide protection, control and
Sverige, is the third largest hydroelectric monitoring of generators and lines from IEC 61850 with
power producer in Sweden. In a typical
year it produces about 8 TWh from 77
the outgoing high-voltage substation.
Three native IEC 61850 compliant ABB
a single control
hydro power plants, from Kristianstad in Relion® IEDs are integrated with System system provided
the south to Lycksele in the north. Most 800xA, two redundant REG670 IEDs are
of these plants were built between the used for generator protection and one E.ON with the
1950s and 1970s using what is now con- REL670 for protection of the outgoing
sidered legacy technology. Up to 2015, 130 kV line. All the IEDs are integrated
means to investi-
E.ON plans to invest SEK 6 billion ($763 with the AC 800M controller using gate the benefits
million) in safety, renewal and productivity IEC 61850-defined GOOSE. This enables
improvements in installed power plants. the AC 800M controller to function not of using the stan-
All of E.ON's hydro power plants are usu- only as the process controller, but also to
ally operated remotely from the central act as an IED on the IEC 61850 network,
dard for standard-
control center in Sundsvall, and are visit-
ed only for maintenance reasons.
communicating horizontally with all other
IEDs as well as with the control center via
ized system inte-
satellite communication. Important data gration, application
One of these, the Flåsjö hydro power from the IEDs include measurements such
plant, was the first upstream plant installed as power, reactive power, voltages and building, installa-
on the river Ljungan in northern Swe-
den ➔ 3. Since 2009, it holds the distinc-
currents, together with breaker and dis-
connector statuses ➔ 4. This data is dis-
tion and testing.
tion of being one of the first hydro power played at the local System 800xA opera-
plants in the world to utilize a combination tor workplace and the control center in
of IEC 61850 and System 800xA for both Sundsvall some 260 km away from where
process and substation automation. the system is usually monitored and con-
trolled ➔ 5. In addition, alarms and events
In the installation at Flåsjö, the original from the combined process and substa-
relay-based system was replaced by one tion automation system are also transmit-
System 800xA together with an AC 800M ted to Sundsvall, providing operators with
controller. Process control handles appli- valuable information about the plant. At
cations such as turbine control, vibration the control center, the operators monitor
protection and synchronization. Process and control the plant using an ABB Net-
electrification and control of auxiliaries work Management System. They also
and pumps are done using Profibus have remote access to the System 800xA
communication with ABB’s modular low- operator workplace, providing a redun-
voltage switchgear MNS. dant connection to the control system.
T
he development of the control centers. The results will be pub- decoupling of primary and secondary
IEC 61850 standard is con- lished as technical reports. equipment (makes maintenance and
tinuing. This work is primarily replacement easier).
aimed at remedying various The report that handles communication – The serial interface makes the applica-
shortcomings that were identified during between substations is published as tions independent of the physical
the first installations, but it also seeks to IEC TR 61850 90 1 [8]. Its results are principle of the instrument transformer
enhance its application range – as is re- being integrated into the second edition (electromagnetic, capacitive, optical,
flected in its changed title “Communica- of the base standard. Besides discuss- others) allowing more flexibility on the
tion Networks and Systems for Power ing direct tunneling of Ethernet-level primary equipment side.
Utilities” [3]. This work is resulting in Edi- messages on high-bandwidth links, it
tion 2 of the standard, which is being also looks at the usage of proxy gate- Edition 1 of the standard did not define a
published in 15 parts during 2010. ways with low-bandwidth links ➔ 2. solution for the time synchronization re-
quired for the communication of samples
Expanding into new application areas The report handling communications at rates in the region of microseconds.
IEC 61850 was originally defined exclu- between substations and network con- Therefore, and to achieve the accep-
sively for substation automation systems trol centers will be published as IEC tance of a faster process bus, the user
(including protection applications). It has TR 61850-90-2 [9] and any resulting add- organization, UCA International [11], de-
since been extended to other application ons to the base standard will be integrat- veloped an application recommendation
areas. These are automation of wind ed into an amend-
power systems [4], hydro power systems ment to Edition 2,
[5], and distributed energy resources or at the latest in IEC 61850 was originally
such as combined heat and power sys- Edition 3 of the
tems or photovoltaic plants [6]. The fact base standard. defined exclusively for substa-
that the standard is being applied in the
domain of distributed energy resources Work on a third re-
tion automation systems, but
indicates the significance of IEC 61850 port handling the has since been extended to
for smart grids. automated trans-
formation and map- other application areas.
Aspects of the extension of IEC 61850 to ping between the
these domains include the following: IEC 61850 data
– The services of IEC 61850 have been model and the IEC 61970 Common known as IEC 61850-9-2LE (Light Edi-
proven to fulfill the known require- Information Model (CIM, [10]) has just tion). This recommendation is based on
ments of these other domains and begun. the concept of a merging unit (MU) that
may hence be applied without delivers all current and voltage samples
GPS
Station Backup
server (NAS)
Redundant
gateways
BBP/BFP
central unit
REB500 REC670 7SA612 REC670 7SA612 REC670 7SA612 REC670 7SA612 REC670 7SA612
L+G ZMQ REB500 BU L+G ZMQ REB500 BU L+G ZMQ REB500 BU L+G ZMQ REB500 BU L+G ZMQ REB500 BU
380 kV BBP 380 kV line 1 380 kV coupler 380 kV transformer 2 380 kV transformer 1 380 kV line 2
Fiber optical
Special Station bus
Station A Communication Station B
Mechanism Currents (I)
Function (typically low Function Voltages (U) MU
A1 bandwidth) A1
Merging Unit
IED
Protection Fiber optical
Trip decision Process bus
Function Proxy Function BIED
A2 B2 B2 Breaker
Protection trip Interface
ample be used for the two affected verified that the Edition 1 devices used
It is possible to breakers of a 1 ½ breaker switchyard di- already implement resolutions of all tech-
ameter, or for breaker failure protection. nical problems identified up to Edition 2.
use Edition 2 engi- This can be done by means of the so
Besides the correction of errors and many small details, Edition 2 of – Management hierarchies of logical devices: Especially complex
IEC 61850 will contain the following add-ons: multifunctional protection IEDs require more functional levels for the
management of common parameters. For an example see ➔ 5b: The
– Clarifications of unclear parts such as: logical device Ocp controls the mode of the lower level logical devices
– buffered reporting OpcPhs and OpcGnd by group reference (GrRef) which additionally could
– mode switch (test mode) be controlled individually.
– control access hierarchy (local / remote) – New data objects and concepts for testing of function parts in the
– Data model and SCL extensions for communication between running system: This feature allows now a standardized application of
substations: discussed above and outlined in ➔ 2 the test and test-blocked mode which was already introduced in Edition
– Support for redundant IED interfaces: discussed in "Seamless 1 and is now clarified in Edition 2. It supports the handling of test
redundancy” on pages 57-61 of this ABB Review Special Report. messages in parallel to the real messages.
– Data model extensions for new application functions: supervision of – SCL extensions to describe new IED properties and better support
non electrical quantities, etc. (These new logical nodes have been mainly of engineering processes and retrofit: The data exchange between
introduced by other application domains such as hydro-power plants) different projects in a controlled way allows coordinated engineering in
– Statistical evaluations of measurements as contained in the logical parallel running subprojects.
nodes MMXU and MMXN: Triggered by power-quality discussions and – SCL implementation conformance statement (SICS): stating
other application domains such as wind power ➔ 5a. mandatory and optional features of IED tools and system tools. This
– Support for tracking and logging of services and service responses: feature allows judging the degree of interoperability between different
This feature makes service parameters and service handling visible engineering tools, system tools as well as IED tools.
without the use of protocol analyzers by the standard’s existing reporting – An informative part 7-5x with examples of modeling important
and logging facilities and allows, eg, the logging of negative answers on application functions in the system: This part is intended to support
service requests (negative acknowledgements). This feature is useful both common understanding of modeling and to move towards broadly
for commissioning and security supervision. accepted modeling solutions
5a Example for statistical methods (ClcMth) applied on MMXU 5b Management hierarchy for logical devices
sumed prerequisite to the functioning of References [9] IEC/TR 61850-90-2, Communication networks
such a grid is that more information can [1] IEC 61850 (Ed 1), Communication Networks and systems for power utility automation – Part
be made available in a reliable and timely and Systems in Substations, 14 Parts, 90-2: Use of IEC 61850 for the communication
2003-2005, http://www.iec.ch. between substation and network control
manner to more and more distributed ap-
[2] Brand, K.P, Reinhardt, P, 2008, Experience center, in work
plications and users, permitting control to with IEC 61850 based Substation Automation [10] IEC 61970-301, Energy management system
be optimized. This will assure the grid’s Systems, Praxis Profiline – IEC 61850, 66-71 application program interface (EMS-API) – Part
stability, make electrical energy available [3] IEC 61850 Ed 2, Communication Networks 301: Common Information Model (CIM) Base,
and Systems for Power Utility Automation, 2003-11
where needed, and permit interactive
scheduled for 2010, http://www.iec.ch [11] IEC 61850-9-2LE (Light edition) Implementa-
communication with consumers. This re- [4] IEC 61400-25-x, Wind turbines – Part 25-1: tion Guideline for Digital Interface to Instrument
quires the needed data to be made avail- Communications for monitoring and control of Transformers using IEC 61850-9-2, UCA
able within a common information net- wind power plants, 2006-12 International Users Group, www.ucainterna-
[5] IEC 61850-7-410, Communication networks tional.org
work and according to standardized data
and systems for power utility automation – Part [12] IEEE 1588, Precision Clock Synchronization
semantics. This is precisely where IEC 7-410: Hydroelectric power plants – Communi- Protocol for Networked Measurement and
61850 fits in. Therefore IEC 61850 has cation for monitoring and control, 2007-08 Control Systems
been taken up alongside IEC 61970 in a [6] IEC 61850-7-420, Communication networks [13] IEC 60444 Instrument transformers
and systems for power utility automation – Part [14] IEC 61869, Instrument transformers – Part 1:
smart-grid related report from EPRI [15]
7 420: Basic communication structure – Distri- General requirements, 2007-10 (others parts in
and adopted by NIST as a key interest. buted energy resources logical nodes, 2009-03 work)
[7] Swiss Chapter of IEEE PES, Hydro Power [15] Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI),
Klaus-Peter Brand Workshop I (Handeck, 2008) und Workshop II Report to NIST on the Smart Grid Interoper-
(Genf, 2009), http://pes.ieee.ch ability Standards Roadmap, June 17, 2009
Wolfgang Wimmer
[8] IEC/TR 61850-90-1, Communication (www.nist.gov/smartgrid )
ABB Substation Automation networks and systems for power utility
Baden, Switzerland automation – Part 90-1: Use of IEC 61850 for
klaus-peter.brand@ch.abb.com the communication between substations, to
be published summer 2009
wolfgang.wimmer@ch.abb.com
S
KLAUS-PETER BRAND, WOLFGANG ubstation automation (SA) is include the maximum allowed response
WIMMER – The communication stan- commonly used to control, time for an action. Ethernet was origi-
dard IEC 61850 was introduced to protect and monitor substa- nally designed to be tolerant of failures,
standardize the communication for tions [1]. Up to now, the com- but not to guarantee response times.
substation automation so that all munication for SA has used proprietary Therefore for this purpose special rules
devices, no matter their origin, could serial communication systems comple- must be applied so that the Ethernet can
communicate using a standard mented by conventional parallel copper be used for time critical application func-
protocol replacing wires with serial wiring, especially from the bay level tions.
communication. Based on mainstream to the switchgear. With the advent of
communication technology, like that IEC 61850 [2], a comprehensive global Failure modes and services
of the Ethernet, IEC 61850 benefits standard for all communication needs in A failure means that some component in
from a high degree of flexibility with the substation is available. the SA system is not working as intend-
regard to communication architecture. ed, which impacts the functionality of the
Any solution, however, has to fulfill The reliability of SA communication ar- SA system. Failures can be permanent or
stringent reliability requirements to chitectures is of great importance for the temporary. Failures produce errors in the
ensure a constant power supply in reliability of the power supply from the intended system functionality. The result
transmission and distribution grids to power transmission and distribution grid. of a permanent failure may be the loss of
accomplish the safety-critical mission Up until now a dedicated communica- power supply, loss of processing elec-
of substation automation. Mainstream tion system has been used, however the tronics, or loss of communication ports,
Ethernet connections do not neces- IEC 61850 uses a standard mainstream like failing diodes for fiber optic links.
sarily provide the required reliability. communication means like Ethernet, These kinds of errors can be accommo-
The IEC 61850 reaches the required which provides a high degree of flexibili- dated by appropriate redundancy strate-
level of communication reliability for ty, but does it bring reliability? gies as discussed in the context of com-
substation automation by configuring munication in the previous article (see
appropriate message filtering and Reliability according to IEC 60870-4 [3] is "Seamless redundancy" on page 57 of
checking the load for worst case defined as a measure of the equipment this issue of the ABB Review Special
application scenarios for time critical or a system to perform its intended func- Report).
communication traffic. tion, under specified conditions, for a
specified period of time. Often investiga- Often, especially in the context of com-
tions concentrate on reliability with re- munication, temporary errors can occur
gard to hardware faults. In the case of as a result of electromagnetic distur-
time-critical functions, like protection or bances or the intermittent failure of com-
load shedding based on serial communi- ponents. These may be caused by tem-
cation, the “specified conditions’ also perature fluctuations, the distortion of
Reliable networking 53
the delay, which for a 1,000 Byte (8 kBit)
1 Collision on a bus with hubs 2 Switches with “store-and-forward”
message and 100 MBit / s Ethernet,
equates to about 100 µs. This is typically
collision much more than the routing time within a
Hub Switch switch. Assuming a ring with 20 switch-
IED IED IED IED es, for example, an additional delay of
g e m
es Hop 1 2 ms can occur between sender and
sa sa ge
es sa
m
ge
m
es Hop 2 receiver.
IED IED IED IED
IED
IED IP-based traffic normally has a deter-
mined destination. Thus a switch can
learn to route a corresponding Ethernet
optical cables that have been bent too The GOOSE service is meant for fast message to a particular port, as shown
much or similar, leading to temporarily sending of process state changes in ➔ 2. The disadvantage of this point to
disturbed or missed messages in the (events). Therefore, to overcome tempo- point traffic is that the sender has to send
communication system. These kinds of rary errors on single messages, the mes- separate messages to each intended re-
failures are typically detected by high- sage is repeated in case a value in the ceiver. For real-time messages there is
level protocols like transmission control GOOSE message changes a few times often more than one receiver of the same
protocol (TCP), and are handled by tell- very quickly (eg, within 4 ms intervals). message. The interlocking function, for
ing the sender about a missed message After this, a fall back to the periodic example, needs the state (switch posi-
and then repeating its dispatch. For this background period occurs in the order of tions) of the bus coupler at all bay con-
reason all IEC 61850-based communica- a second (see “The concept of IEC 61850” trollers of all bays at the same voltage
tions, which are not time critical, are built on page 7 of this issue of the ABB Re- level. Therefore, the GOOSE and SV ser-
on the TCP protocol. To allow additional view Special Report). The time span be- vices use Ethernet-level multicast ad-
routing in arbitrary communication net- tween three or four fast sendings is a dresses. These configurable, hardware-
works, TCP runs on top of the Internet configuration parameter, which typically independent link level addresses also
networking protocol (IP). depends on the maximum tolerable delay. make maintenance easier. As a switch
These services can be used for protec- does not know where the receivers of
Unfortunately, the handling of message tion and other safety related functions [4]. multicast messages are, it typically for-
errors through repetition results in further wards the messages to all devices con-
message delays. The detection of a failed Ethernet specific challenges nected to it, thus producing a lot of pos-
message and its repeated dispatch in Ethernet was originally developed as a sibly unwanted load for the receivers.
TCP is based on an acknowledgement bus system, in which several devices are Considering the interlocking function for
mechanism with timeouts that may lead coupled to a common communication 30 bays, where each bay sends the state
to delays in the order of seconds. How- medium. This mechanism leads to colli- of its busbar related primary switches to
ever, the acceptable maximum delay for sions if two devices
a time critical application function is in try to send data at
the order of 10 ms to 100 ms. TCP- the same time ➔ 1. The reliability of SA communi-
based services, therefore, are not suit- Due to such colli-
able for many automation and protection sions, the response cation architectures is of great
functions. For this reason IEC 61850 in-
troduces the GOOSE (generic object ori-
times during burst
situations are un-
importance for the reliability
ented system event) and SV (sampled predictable, and the of the power supply from
value) services for functions needing maximum through-
real-time performance. Both services are put is less than 10 the power transmission and
directly mapped onto the Ethernet link to 20 percent of the
layer. Both periodically send sequentially raw bit rate of the
distribution grid.
numbered messages, which allow a re- bus. This is over-
ceiver to detect missing messages as come by using Ethernet switches with all other bays in the same voltage level
well as permanent failures. Sampled val- duplex connections between them and with a background period of 1 s, this re-
ues are transmitted with a high rate cor- to the end devices. sults in a background load of 30 mes-
responding to the sampling rate of cur- sages per second. This load is needed at
rents and voltages, eg, 80 messages per Switches work with a “store-and-for- the controllers, however not at the pro-
cycle being 4,000 messages / s for a ward” principle like IP level routers ➔ 2. tection devices, which instead might
50 Hz system, thus replacing a missed They receive a message completely, and need other GOOSE messages eg, for the
sample by the next one very quickly. It is then forward it to the known output port, breaker failure function.
up to the receiving application to handle thereby avoiding message collisions
single lost values, eg, by interpolating completely by prioritizing messages To separate wanted load from unwanted
the received well-known ones already within the switches. The disadvantage of load, Ethernet switches support the con-
from any A/D conversion. switched Ethernet is, that each hop from cept of multicast message filtering. This
one respective switch to another adds to can be based on multicast addresses as
Reliable networking 55
4 Expected load at receivers due to configured data flow 5 Actual load in normal situation due to configured VLANs
Received load per IED based on client allocation Received SV/GOOSE load per IED due to VLAN config, and VLAN list
IED name kBit/s Msgs/s Burst msgs IED name kBit/s Msgs/s Burst msgs VLAN IDs
P2Y1 5 5 25 P2FA1 21 3 9
P2Y1 22 3 12
get closer to the minimum message rate delays in worst case situations. The main This bottleneck can be easily found by
needed for the application level engi- problem here is to know what are the just analyzing the receiver load for nor-
neering as shown ➔ 4. worst case situations seen from the pro- mal data flow based on the SCD file ➔ 4.
cess point of view, and how do they This kind of analysis is recommended for
In a ring network, the filtering configura- manifest themselves in message load for a system without process bus, if it han-
tion at the switches can be derived from the devices hosting application func- dles more than 30 bays. The trend to put
the logical data flow. To avoid filter recon- tions. One typical scenario is a busbar more and more devices to 100 MBit / s
figuration in case of switch ring reconfig- trip, resulting in a change of all measure- Ethernet will make this analysis more and
uration, the filtering should only be con- ments and the tripping of all circuit break- more urgent, since it is the receiving end
figured for the receiving devices or ers within a very short time span, with devices that have the bottlenecks and
between different rings, while all ports the addition of 10 alarms from the switch- not the communication system itself.
between switches should allow all used yard or protection system. Other scenar-
VLANs. The filter to the receiving devices ios depend on the switch yard configura- To conclude, networking can be highly re-
can be automatically calculated together tion and its place in the power network liable for substations and utility automa-
with the receiver load. As an example ➔ 5 and must be defined by the utilities. If tion is possible using modern main stream
contains the VLAN identifications, which these scenarios and the resulting mes- communication technology, such as Eth-
should be configured at the switches to sage load are known, the system de- ernet, in accordance with IEC 61850.
be sent to the port where the correspond- scription as IEC 61850 SCL file allows for
ing device is connected. As VLAN 000 a tool to determine the resulting mes-
just means “ignore the VLAN and send sages and their flow to the end devices
everywhere”, here the only thing to be as illustrated above. With a description
configured is the VLAN 001 as output to of the physical structure, the flow through
the device P2KA4. In a similar way a re- the switch network may be calculated
lated configuration for filtering based on also; this includes the required maximum Klaus-Peter Brand
multicast addressing can be generated. buffer size to ensure that no message is Wolfgang Wimmer
lost, as well as the maximum delay in the ABB Substation Automation
For tree networks a similar strategy output queues. This allows the maximum Baden, Switzerland
could be used. However, if within the tree GOOSE and SV message delay to be de- klaus-peter.brand@ch.abb.com
network appropriate filtering is also termined in advance, and the buffer size wolfgang.wimmer@ch.abb.com
needed, an additional formal description of the switches to be check against their
of the physical network, as defined in required size. If this is not consistent,
IEC 61850-6 Ed2 [5], also permits the then redesigning the communication ar- References
switch filter configuration to be automat- chitecture might be a solution. More buf- [1] Brand, K.P., Lohmann, V., Wimmer, W. (2003)
Substation Automation Handbook, UAC.
ically derived from the logical data flow. fer space in the switches might be re-
ISBN 3-85759-951-5. Retrieved June 6 2010
quired, or in the worst case the application from www.uac.ch
Finally the configuration data must be implementation itself may need to be [2] IEC 61850 (2002 2005) Communication
manually loaded into the switches (differ- changed to reduce the communication networks and systems in substations. Retrieved
June 6, 2010 from www.iec.ch
ently per switch manufacturer). This load required.
[3] IEC 60870-4 (1990) Telecontrol equipment and
should change in the future, since IEC systems; Part 4 – Performance requirements.
TC57 WG10 is working on a standard- However, these kinds of problems only Retrieved June 6, 2010 from www.iec.ch
ized switch configuration description in arise in very big systems or systems [4] Brand, K.P., Ostertag, M., Wimmer, W. (2003)
Safety related distributed functions in
SCL, which should then be used as input where SV messages are used between
Substations and IEC 61850. IEEE BPT Bologna,
to switch engineering tools. several bays. It is common today in big Paper 660
systems without process bus and only a [5] IEC 61850-6Ed2 (2009) Communication
The formal description of the physical few GOOSE-based functions to find bot- networks and systems for power utility
automation – Part 6: Configuration description
structure also supports handling of the tle necks typically at the station level de-
language for communication in electrical
last problem: probable message loss due vices, may be at the human machine in- substations related to IEDs. Retrieved June 6,
to insufficient buffer size and additional terface (HMI), or may be at the gateway. 2010 from http://electronics.ihs.com
HUBERT KIRRMANN – The IEC 61850 standard has become the the station bus as well as for the process bus. It is based on
backbone of substation automation, allowing for the first time two complementary protocols defined in the IEC 62439-3
interoperation between protection, measurement and control standard: parallel redundancy protocol (PRP) and high-avail-
devices from different manufacturers on the same Ethernet ability seamless redundancy (HSR) protocol. Both are able to
local area network, station or process bus. This network is overcome the failure of a link or switch with zero switchover
duplicated in substations that require a very high availability. time, while allowing clock synchronization according to IEEE
Interoperability requires that all devices use the same redun- 1588 to operate reliably. Developed by ABB in collaboration
dancy concept. IEC 61850 now specifies a network redundan- with other companies, both PRP and HSR will be part of the
cy that fulfills the requirements of substation automation, for second edition of the IEC 61850 standard.
Seamless redundancy 57
1 A non-redundant station bus
logger
gg GPS network
control centre
printer
station
supervisory operator
level workplace gateway
switch S
optical fibre links
station bus (ring)
T
he IEC 61850 standard re- pology. HSR (IEC 62439-3 Clause 5) ap- station bus as ring
places the numerous busses plies the PRP principle to rings and to
and links in use today by a hi- rings of rings to achieve cost-effective
erarchy of well specified redundancy. To this effect, each device IED IED IED IED
switched Ethernet networks, namely the incorporates a switch element that for-
switch
station bus between the bays and the wards frames from port to port. element IED
process bus within a bay. To achieve in-
teroperability, IEC 61850 Edition 2 speci- IEC 61850 network topology
fies in greater detail the underlying proto- IEC 61850 encompasses two busses physical Ethernet network could carry
cols of these busses. Two indispensable based on switched Ethernet technology both the station and the process bus
network features for a real-time system [4]: traffic.
are given particular attention: time syn- – The station bus [5] interconnects all
chronization and network redundancy. bays and the station supervisory level; For the station bus, the network topology
Time synchronization is solved by the it mainly carries control information, generally adopted in large substations is
simple network time protocol (SNTP) [1], such as measurements, interlocking that each voltage level uses a ring of
with stricter requirements taken care of and select-before-operate. Typically switches, which connect the main pro-
by the IEEE standard 1588 [2]. Redun- the manufacturing messaging specifi- tection, backup protection and control
dancy was a major hurdle, since the lack cation (MMS) protocol is used to IEDs ➔ 1. In smaller medium-voltage
of a commonly accepted redundancy transfer data between station level substations, a cost-effective arrange-
protocol prompted manufacturers to and bay level intelligent electronic ment uses IEDs that include a switch ele-
market incompatible proprietary solu- devices (IEDs) while generic object ment, which can be chained into a ring
tions. oriented substation events (GOOSE) topology, making the network resilient to
looks after bay IED to bay IED data the loss of one link ➔ 2.
IEC 61850 edition 2 now includes two transfer.
redundancy protocols, which are defined – The process bus [6] interconnects the In large substations, the different voltage
in the IEC standard 62439-3 [3] and ap- IEDs within a bay and mainly carries level rings are connected to the station
plicable to substations of any size and measurements, known as sampled level in a tree formation, allowing the sta-
topology for the station bus as well as for values (SV), for protection. The SV are tion bus to exhibit a mixed ring and tree
the process bus: parallel redundancy sampled at a nominal value of 4 kHz topology. Alternatively, a ring of rings for-
protocol (PRP) and high-availability in 50 Hz grids (4.8 kHz in 60 Hz mation can also be used.
seamless redundancy (HSR). In both grids).
protocols, each node has two identical At the process bus level, IEDs are typically
Ethernet ports for one network connec- IEC 61850 does not prescribe a topolo- simple measurement and control devices
tion. They rely on the duplication of gy, tree, star or ring. Indeed, the same connected to the protection and control
switch control PI
IA2 PI
PMC1
I sensors switch switch
IB1 PI
switched local area switched local area
9-2 traffic network (ring) LAN_A network (tree) LAN_B
actor PI
switch switch switch switch
PMC2
IB2 PI
I sensors
IC1 PI 8-1 traffic
SAN SAN SAN
switch control PI
A2 B1 B2
PI RedBox
I sensors IC2 ICL DANP DANP DANP
PI: Process interface
PMC: Protection, SAN SAN
U/I sensors U CS U CL PI
measurement, control R1 R2
Seamless redundancy 59
6 A duplicated station bus with parallel redundancy protocol (PRP) 7 A high-availability seamless redundancy (HSR) protocol ring
… B A
DANP DANP DANP
− Redundancy in the nodes. A node is nicate only with DANPs and SANs at- ring and every node forwards the frames
attached to two different redundant tached to the same network), or are at- it receives from one port to the other.
networks of arbitrary topology by two tached through what is known as a red When the originating node receives a
ports ➔ 5. Each node independently box, a device that behaves like a frame it sent itself, it discards it to avoid
chooses the network to use. This DANP ➔ 6. loops; therefore, no special ring protocol
scheme supports any network is needed.
topology; the redundant networks can The nodes detect the duplicates with a
even exhibit a different structure. The sequence number inserted in the frames To detect duplicates, the Ethernet frames
cost of implementing this redundancy after the payload. This allows full trans- include a sequence number incremented
method is about twice that of the parency of PRP (DANP) and non-PRP by the source for each sent frame. Con-
redundancy method discussed in the (SANP) nodes. The complete PRP proto- trary to PRP, the sequence number is not
previous bullet, but the gain in col can be executed in software. Node inserted after the payload, but in the
availability is large. The only non- failures are not covered by PRP, but du- header so the switch element can recog-
redundant parts are the nodes plicated nodes may be connected via a nize the duplicates before they are re-
themselves. PRP network. ceived entirely. Therefore, cut-through
operation with less than 5 µs per node is
With regard to PRP, IEC 62439-3 Clause HSR possible.
4 specifies redundancy in devices in HSR applies the PRP principle of parallel
which the nodes use the two networks operation to a single ring, treating the With respect to a single ring, the bus
simultaneously. This offers zero recovery two directions as two virtual LANs. This traffic is roughly doubled, but the aver-
time, making PRP suited for all difficult allows a significant reduction in hardware age propagation time is reduced, allow-
real-time applications. costs because no switches are used and ing the ring to support a similar number
only one link is added. However, all of devices. Individually attached nodes,
IEC 62439-3 Clause 5 defines another such as laptops and printers are at-
redundancy-in-the-nodes solution with tached through a “redundancy box” that
HSR, in which a switch element is inte- PRP offers easy acts as a ring element.
grated in each device. The operating
mode is the same as for PRP. integration of non- A pair of redundancy boxes can be used
Seamless redundancy 61
IEC 61850 – a
success story
around the world
Substation automation systems pave the
way to a smarter grid
T
he development of powerful technologies such as sensors integrated
tools and efficient processes via the process bus.
6
simplifies the implementation
of IEC 61850 across the port- The continuous commitment to the global
folio of products, applications and sys- IEC 61850 standard from the mid nineties
tems. Full compliance to the standard is and into the future with expert engage-
verified by an in-house system verifica- ment in new editions as well as extensions
tion center, the world’s first vendor- into other domains such as power gener-
owned test laboratory to earn qualifica- ation, communication between substa-
tion by the UCA International Users tions and to network control centers al-
Group. lows ABB to support customers wanting
to benefit from these developments. enable efficient power system manage-
The state-of-the-art product portfolio ment and integrate substations that are
along with proven system integration ca- Offering its comprehensive domain knowl- reliably supplying energy from conven-
pabilities enables ABB to realize the edge both of the power value chain and tional and renewable resources to millions
standard’s full potential in substation au- industrial processes, ABB provides utility of people or are powering industrial pro-
tomation systems. This is equally en- and industry customers with SA systems ductivity, into the smart grid.
sured in systems with centralized and leveraging both current and future per-
decentralized architectures, GOOSE- spectives and benefits of the standard. This map shows a selection of IEC 61850
based and distributed functions as well Facilitating enterprise-wide data integra- implementations around the world with
as multi-vendor integration and latest tion, the IEC 61850 automation systems ABB participation.
Editorial Council
Peter Terwiesch
Chief Technology Officer
Group R&D and Technology
Claes Rytoft
Head of Technology
Power Systems division
claes.rytoft@ch.abb.com
Hugo E. Meier
Head of Global Product Management
Substation Automation
hugo.e.meier@ch.abb.com
Harmeet Bawa
Head of Communications
Power Systems and Power Products
harmeet.bawa@ch.abb.com
Petra Reinhardt
Communications Manager
Business Unit Substations
petra.reinhardt@ch.abb.com
Andreas Moglestue
Chief Editor, ABB Review
andreas.moglestue@ch.abb.com
Publisher
10 ABB Review is published by ABB Group R&D and
Technology.
Printer
15
Vorarlberger Verlagsanstalt GmbH
AT-6850 Dornbirn/Austria
Layout
DAVILLA Werbeagentur GmbH
New installation AT-6900 Bregenz/Austria
Retrofit/migration
Disclaimer
The information contained herein reflects the views
of the authors and is for informational purposes
➔ 1 Teck Cominco’s Waneta 230/63 kV S/S, Canada only. Readers should not act upon the information
➔ 2 EGL’s Laufenburg 380 kV Substation, Switzerland contained herein without seeking professional
➔ 3 EDP Distribuiçao Energia’s six HV/MV stations, Portugal advice. We make publications available with the
➔ 4 Senelec’s Hann 90/30 kV S/S, Senegal understanding that the authors are not rendering
➔ 5 ENELVEN’s and ENELCO’s Soler & Médanos S/Ss, Venezuela technical or other professional advice or opinions
➔ 6 Eletrosul’s three 230/69 kV S/Ss, Brazil on specific facts or matters and assume no
➔ 7 EWA’s Financial Harbour, Sitra & Buquwwah S/Ss, Bahrain liability whatsoever in connection with their use.
The companies of the ABB Group do not make any
➔ 8 DEWA SA frame contracts, Dubai
warranty or guarantee, or promise, expressed or
➔ 9 Transco’s and ADWEA’s new 400 - 11 kV GIS S/Ss, Abu Dhabi
implied, concerning the content or accuracy of the
➔ 10 Federal Grid Company’s Ochakovo 500/220/110 kV S/S, Russia views expressed herein.
➔ 11 NTC’s six new 161/22.8 kV S/Ss, Taiwan
➔ 12 Six new HV substations for PGCIL, India ISSN: 1013-3119
➔ 13 SA for PT PLN’s five retrofit 150 kV S/Ss, Indonesia
➔ 14 NGCP’s Pitogo S/S and Meralco’s Amadeo S/S, Philippines www.abb.com/abbreview
➔ 15 Rio Tinto/Hamersley Iron’s 220 kV Juna Downs S/S, Australia
63
Power under control?
Absolutely.
The IEC 61850 open communication standard provides a common framework for substation
automation and facilitates interoperability across devices and systems. ABB’s IEC 61850
compliant systems enable real-time control and monitoring and help maximize availability,
efficiency, reliability and safety. They enable flexibility for multi-vendor integration and
extension, in addition to supporting enterprise-wide data integration for efficient power system
management. With an unparalleled installed base and a proven track record of technology
and innovation, ABB is a substation partner you can depend on. www.abb.com
www.abb.com/substationautomation