Abstract
Interoperability testing and analysis tools provide a means for achieving and assuring the integrity of multivendor intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) data exchanges. However, the testing and analysis are very time consuming and error prone, and these problems worsen when a substation becomes large and complex during the engineering process, commission, replacement, maintenance, and extension. To address this challenge, this paper presents a virtual digital substation test system (VDSTS) with interoperability analysis tools for assessing and identifying the engineering challenges for the multiple-vendors digital substation. This VDSTS consists of three parts: (i) A virtual digital substation modelling for generating real-time digital substation primary plant operation and fault conditions, (ii) a standard IEC 61850-based substation protection, automation, and control (PAC) system architecture with multivendor IEDs and bay solutions, and (iii) multivendor Substation Configuration description Language (SCL) tools and in-house built data visualisation tool. The study focuses on the interoperability testing of sampled values (SV), generic object-oriented substation events (GOOSE), and manufacturing message specification (MMS) communication services, as defined in IEC 61850. The main issues identified are compatibility issues of SCL tools, protocol implementation issues, different information models, and application limitations. The outcomes will help utilities to reduce the risks associated with the general rollout of digital substations.
Highlights
The IEC 61850 standards have been widely applied to substation protection, automation, and control (PAC) systems for real-time applications nowadays [1,2,3,4,5]
If vendor A needs to read vendor B generic object-oriented substation events (GOOSE), the Ideally, each bay supplier should be able to use a site substation configuration description (SCD) file generated from a vendor A System Configuration description Language (SCL) tool will import the vendor B bay SCD to create a GOOSE mapping in its common system integration tool to re-configure its intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) for inter-bay GOOSE subscriptions
This paper presents a standard PAC system architecture design for digital substations and a real-time virtual substation primary plant modelling using real-time digital simulator (RTDS) and develops a multivendor test platform to assess the challenges for integration, data visualisation, and interoperability
Summary
The IEC 61850 standards have been widely applied to substation protection, automation, and control (PAC) systems for real-time applications nowadays [1,2,3,4,5]. A key enabler to drive value for secondary equipment, such as AMUs, DMUs, and IEDs, is a standard architecture, designed to deliver standard digital and physical interfaces, which enable the reuse of proven designs to reduce outage time and cost associated with commissioning, maintenance, testing and replacement of PAC solutions, and enable vendor interoperability. To achieve this objective, the substation PAC system architecture should consider a number of design rules [19,21], such as the following:.
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