Substation Automation Techniques and Future Trends
A B S Mohamed Rayees
Al Ain Distribution Company, United Arab Emirates
Rayees@aadc. ae
Abstract
This article analyzes the automation techniques
presently adopted for the control, monitoring and
protection of the medium voltage substations in the
Abu Dhabi Electricity Network. The innovations in
Information Technology (IT) and high speed
communications have changed the way we operate and
maintain the substations. Clusters of multi-core
cabling and multitude of cubicles are now replaced by
state-of-art Electro Magnetic Interference (EMI)
retardant fiber optic cabling, Intelligent Electronic
Devices (IED's) and afew processor desks.
This article elaborates on thefunction ofIntelligent
Electronic Devices (IED's) at the bay levels and how
and what information is extracted from the field
equipment. The role of front end controllers at the
substation levelforming the brain of the whole process
is also described. There are also numbers of
accessories forming the backbone of the station level
communication and required for execution of remote
control and monitoring from the Distribution
Management Centre (DMC) located remotely from the
substations.
Despite the advances in computer systems,
substation automation components supplied from
diferent vendors are not fully compatible. Therefore it
was needed to develop a standardfor interoperability
of various automation devices which has lead to the
evolution of the IEC 61850 standard. Abu Dhabi
Electricity Network has no hesitation in adopting the
same by specifying only 61850 compliant products in
future automated substations.
Keywords
Substation Automation, IED, LAN, Ethernet, Fiber,
DMC, Protocols, Interoperability, IEC 61850
978-1-4244-1841-1/08/$25.00 C 2008 IEEE
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1. Introduction
Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Authority
(ADWEA) was established as a central body in 1999
comprising of a number of deregulated companies for
generating, selling, transmitting and distributing water
and electricity in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. Al Ain
Distribution Company (AADC), an entity of ADWEA
is overseeing the distribution activities in the Eastern
Region of Abu Dhabi Emirate. AADC obtains power
at the 33kV side of transmission company's 220/33kV
transformers at the grid stations and distribute to the
customers through hundreds of 33/1lkV primary
substations and thousands of 11/0.4kV distribution
substations.
AADC is one of the forerunners in the Region for
adopting Information Technology (IT) innovations in
the power industry. Since its inception, the local and
remote Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition
System (SCADA) of 33kV grid stations is realized
through state-of-art automation based system and the
same technology has been recently applied for the
33/1 kV primary substations. This paper presents how
the Substation Automation (SA) is currently
implemented in AADC network and compares it with
conventional technology. Some of the difficulties
which were experienced after implementation of SA
are also presented.
Like any other efficiency driven user, AADC was
seeking an open protocol for communication of
automation devices from several vendors in a common
substation environment. Therefore AADC had no
hesitation to adopt IEC 61850 which specifies
interoperability of automation devices. This paper also
outlines in brief the 61850 requirements and the
advantages AADC would gain by promoting this
standard in the product specifications. Foreseen
developments in automation techniques are also briefly
discussed.
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2. Substation Control and Monitoring
The major functions which are required for
realization of substation control and monitoring are:
* Control of switching devices
* Protection from system faults and abnormalities
* Voltage regulation through transformer tapping
* Load shedding with frequency control
* MVAr detection and capacitor bank switching
* Status indication and event recording
* Fault location and disturbance recording
* Synchro-check and synchronizing
Initially, above functions were achieved through
multiple panels located in control rooms and connected
to the switchgear by a cluster of multi-core control
cabling hard wired system with approximately 15-
20km for a typical 33kV substation. Figure 1 below is
showing a typical conventional control architecture.
_ F
* DMC
JControl cables
*Suite of panels
Figure 1. Conventional control architecture
Computerization of power system industry was
initially applied on the protection relays. Analogue to
digital conversion (A/DC), sampling and filtering
techniques and algorithms for several applications etc.
are achieved through microprocessors. Advances in
digital signal processing, the development of high
speed processors and memory devices such as
EPROM/EEPROM have added innovations in
protection technology. The development of industry
tolerant high speed computers, electromagnetic
retardant fiber optic cabling in parallel with
continuously evolving communication technology such
as 10OMps Ethernet physical network has finally lead
into a comprehensive automation system for substation
functions.
The digitization of data for processing of SA plus
the use of fibers brought out the following advantages:
1. Highly accurate and non-distorted data
2. Quick, easy and large transfer of data
3. More functions and processing with the same data
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4. Greater degree of self supervision
3. Substation Automation
Substation Automation (SA) has been built with
significantly fewer panels than conventional control
and a few hundred meters of communication cabling.
Sophisticated and intelligent services which were not
thought of earlier are achieved easily through SA. Real
time monitoring at a resolution of Ims, analogue
trending, device watchdog monitoring, secured control
with reduction of human errors through built-in safety
interlocks, downloading disturbance records are to
name but a few of the major benefits seen. The Figure
2 shows the following main SA hardware components,
which are normally arranged in a redundant
configuration (redundancy is not shown in figure).
1. Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs)
2. Local Area Network (LAN)
3. Front End Controllers (FECs)
4. Operators/Engineers Work Stations (OWS/EWS)
3.1. IEDs:
IEDs are the components at the lowest bay level of
the SA vertical hierarchy which acquire basic
information from substation equipment. The Bay
Control Units/ Bay Control and Protection Units
(BCUs/BCPUs) located in the 33kV and 1lkV
switchgear and the protection relays serve as IEDs.
DMC
Ethernet Switches
I
Station Level LA%N
Front End Controllers
Star couplers Bay Level LAN
BCUs BCPUs Relays
33kV 11kV
Figure 2. Automated control architecture
The IEDs have separate modules for power
supply, analogue and digital inputs and outputs and in
some versions, these are combined. The current and
voltage are the analogue inputs derived from current
and voltage transformers (CTs/VTs). The binary inputs
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are status and alarms such as breaker status, protection
relay operated, transformer taps in Binary Coded
Decimal (BCD) format and the outputs are used for
control actions such as raising a transformer tap and
opening a breaker. The information is further used for
internal processing such as calculation of power,
evaluation for tripping initiation and further
transmission into FECs. One of the vendors built
horizontal interlocking logics between the IEDs,
which helps to perform operations from IEDs during
emergency situation such as station level failures.
The IEDs are built with one or two high speed
central processors with additional processors for
special applications. The memory components are
generally EPROM, RAM, FLASH Memory and
NVRAM with backup batteries. Values to bits
conversion is typically performed using 12 bit A/D
Converters. Digital Signal Processors running at
16MHz or more are employed for performing real time
and fault waveform computations. In existing SA,
IEDs are mostly designed with proprietary and
industry protocols. Relays are mostly designed with
IEC 60870-5-103 protocols.
3.2. LAN:
LAN is a common bus interface where all the
SA devices are connected. A LAN consists of twisted
metallic copper wires and fiber optic cables as physical
media, data flow control devices such as switches,
routers, gateways and network interface modules of all
the devices connected to LAN. Each point of
connection to the bus is called a node and the way the
devices are connected to LAN is termed as the LAN
topology. In view of the better fault tolerance of star
topology over ring, star topology is adopted.
Active star couplers are employed for inter
connection and communication of bay level devices
with the FECs. Ethernet switches are rugged type
designed for the substation hostile environment. The
switches improve the bandwidth of automation
platform as they control the flow of data packets based
on data addresses. Ethernet switches work based on the
Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Detection
(CSMA/CD) network access principle. Routers are
employed for communication to transmission company
SA. Gateways are available for communication
between the substation and DMC which is based on
either IEC 60870-5-101 or 104 protocols. Data
transmission of substations is by DMC polling at
programmed intervals and in asynchronous half duplex
transmission mode with a speed of 1200bits/sec.
Modems and fall back switches for switching of
external communication channels to DMC is also
available. In one of the existing SA system, the
gateway function is built within the FEC. A GPS
receiver with IRIG-B port is connected to LAN for real
time synchronizing across all SA devices.
3.3. FECs:
Industrial top of the range PCs which serve as
FECs are the brains of the SA providing interfaces to
the bay level, station level devices as well as the DMC.
They execute data base management and archiving
tasks and are normally built with one large or two
central processors and a number of coprocessors. Data
flow control is managed at FECs with hardware and
software structure based on OSI/IP layer modeling.
Software structure of one of the SA system
commissioned in AADC network is shown in Table 1.
Table 1. Typical SA layer/software structure
051 Layer P Layer Software
Application Application TELNET/ FTP/
DNP/TFTP/BootP
Presentation Transport TCP/UDP/
Session ICMP
Transport
Network nternet P
Data Link Network IEEE 802.2 LLC
Interface IEEE 802.3
Ethernet
Physical Hardware 1OBaseX
The redundant controllers are normally designed in
a hot/standby configuration with passive unit start over
on the failure of active one. However in certain
designs, complete mirroring of the two units in real
time is available. Also in certain designs, database
management/archiving are built in dedicated servers.
3.4 OWS/EWS:
The OWS and EWS are Human Machine Interfaces
(HlMls) for substation operators and engineers
respectively. OWS provides substation views which
indicates station condition, interlock help and double
confirmation requirements to facilitate performing any

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operations safely and securely. A safety tag could be
added following an operation and operation counters
are available to facilitate maintenance. A number of
screen views are available for alarms, events, trends,
gas pressure monitoring, transformer tap changer
status, SA devices and so on. A typical screen shot of
the station over view is shown in Figure 3. EWS in
addition to having all functions as OWS would help
engineers to download fault records and waveforms in
order to analyze a power system disturbance. It may
also be used to modify relay settings.
Figure 3. Typical Station Overview Display
Work station displays are built with efficient
Graphic User Interface (GUI) software in a Windows
environment. AADC is working to create unified
screen displays in future specifications as differences
in displays from multiple vendors were observed.
4. Problems and Solutions
ADWEA policy promotes competitiveness among
Contractors which has lead to create SA systems
supplied so far from 5 different vendors (from both
utility and process industry backgrounds) in 9 different
grid stations. PCs utilized for SA were supplied by
vendors from commercial industry and failure of PCs
was experienced in certain stations. Failed PCs were
subsequently replaced and reconfigured.
Automatic switchover between hot and standby
FECs on failure of hot unit was not happening in some
instances and manual intervention has been required.
Sluggishness in communication, LAN and IED
failures, automatic update freeze, and loss of
communication to DMC are the other noted problems.
These have been solved by hardware restarts,
replacement of LAN cable/network cards, firmware
updates and installation of new software service packs.
The SA industry is an amalgamation of products
from utility and computer industries. Feedback from
user's experience would be essential for vendors in
developing a seamless SA system in the future.
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5. Advent of IEC 61850 and its Features
The vital limitation of proprietary protocols is that
all products should be from the same vendor, otherwise
protocol converters are required which introduces data
processing delays, data mapping and other inherent
problems. IEC 103 was designed for the SA as a
master slave protocol with limited data and protection
functions, transmission of measurements without time
stamping and low data transmission speed. Process
industry and existing open protocols such as DNP, IEC
870, Modbus has 3 stages for data mapping which is
time consuming and prone to errors viz. IED maps data
into appropriate protocol message, message transmitted
to the HMI/written in to the data base on request, data
modified in to a graphical display. IEC 61850 was
introduced mainly for:
* Ensuring interoperability of devices in the same
substation, a pre-condition for interchangeability
* Splitting of functions from communication,
thereby allowing development of fast evolving
communication technology adopting to a
comparatively slower evolving power industry.
* Encompassing of all communications within the
substation and specifying use of high speed
(Ethernet) communication
Contrary to other protocols, information in IEC
61850 is grouped into logical devices which could be
accessed (instead of individual data points) and only a
tiny mapping to communication is involved. The
logical devices (Ex: Control, Protection etc.) are
grouped as logical nodes and a physical device such as
IED would contain one or more of logical devices.
Examples of logical nodes are circuit breaker (XCBR)
and distance relay (PDIS). Each node would contain
many data such as status, values. The constituents of
data are called data attributes. The information
structure specified in 61850 is illustrated in Figure 4.
Following is a brief summary of some salient
requirements on how IEC 61850 would be applied.
1. Data transfer is based on client-server principle.
The provision of data is on server's request or
automatically if certain conditions are fulfilled.
2. Time critical messages are sent by GOOSE
(Generic Object Oriented Substation Event)
messaging based on publisher-subscriber
relationship. When a critical event occurs, the
information is passed to all devices and the
appropriate device picks and uses the message
according to its needs.
415
3. Sampled values are multicast with a synchronized
time signal.
Physical Device
Z=.&
Lonrical Depvicepl
Figure 4. 61850 Information struture
IEC 61850 specifies the Substation Automation
Configuration Description Language (SCL) based on
Extended Markup Language (XML) format for
configuring and engineering the SA. SCL defines the
station single line diagram, function allocations,
mandatory/optional and extensible data, services,
communication, default and configuration parameters.
The objective of SCL is to have a common description
of SA exchanged between different vendors.
IEC 61850 is a large standard that consists of 10
parts covering overview, general, functional and
communication needs, engineering until conformance
testing. Once the SA system is constructed, it should
undergo conformance testing to verify communications
and interoperability as per 61850 in addition to static,
dynamic and performance tests.
The substation equipment has a life cycle of 30-50
years while the lifecycle of the SA equipment vary
from approximately 2 years (PCs) to 10 years. A
backward compatible device would only be available
in case of replacement of a faulty device in view of
advances in IT. With IEC 61850, whole description is
in SCL file and system integrator can perform his tasks
easier than before which would ultimately result in
increased life cycle of the SA.
6. Advanced Possibilities of SA
IEC 61850 also specifies the extension of SA down
to the bay level where the substation primary
equipment is situated. CTs/VTs would be replaced by
sensors and actuators fitted directly on to the primary
equipment, which would be connected to the SA by
means of a process bus. An IEC taskforce has already
concluded that IEC 61850 is capable to cover
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communication for tele-control beyond the substation.
This facility would let direct access for the DMC (with
only routers in place of gateways) in future designs.
Studies are in place to extend the application of
61850 for power quality and metering. The flexibility
of 61850 could easily be applied to wind/hydropower
in addition to other utilities such as water and gas.
High speed communication would be achieved with
a Gigabit Ethernet in future SA systems. The evolving
processing power of computers would apply EXPERT
systems for automated analysis of power disturbances.
The fault location algorithm in IEDs interfaced with
GIS (Geographical Information System) would assist
operator's decision to restore power on the affected
areas by exactly identifying the area of disturbances,
thereby reducing the repair times.
7. Conclusion
The innovations in the IT industry have a
considerable positive impact on the way we control
and maintain the substations. The space occupied by
cables and panels and associated maintenance
requirements have largely been reduced. With the click
of a few buttons, device operations are performed and
alarm information can be obtained The advances in
software have reduced the restoration times and
thereby have reduced energy losses to the company.
It would take some while for engineers and system
users to appreciate the full use of 61850. The larger the
power system data is required, more would be
requirement of IT and more important the 61850
efforts would be. AADC has no constraint in adopting
IEC 61850 to its future standard specifications as this
will have a big impact on savings on the capital and
operating expenditure of substation assets.
8. References
[1] EC 61850, "Communication Networks and Systems in
Substations"
[2] Ivan De Mesmaeker, Peter Rietmann, Klaus-Peter Brand,
Petra Reinhardt, "Practical considerations in applying IEC
61850 for Protection and Substation Automation Systems",
CIGRE Conference, 2005
[3] John Park, Steve Mackay, Edwin Wright, "Practical Data
Communications for Instrumentation and Control", Newnes,
Great Britain, 2003
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