21, rue d’Artois, F-75008 PARIS Paper number CIGRE 2012

http : //www.cigre.org B5-110

The next generation of Smart Substations.

Challenges and Possibilities

Jorge Cárdenas, Alberto López De Viñaspre Hamzah Farooqui

Rodrigo Argandoña, Camilo De Arriba
GE Digital Energy GE Digital Energy
Spain Barhein
Jorge.cardenas@ge.com

1. Abstract
Rising energy demand and increase cost in building new substations has motivated the utilities to
utilize their electrical system capabilities more efficiently and smartly. Consequently the
manufacturers have also started exploring the requirements for a modern substation model with the
help of technical enhancements and innovations which could lead to accomplish these new challenges.
The goals and the proposed solutions identified for the above requirements in the Electrical
Substations area can be described as follows:
1. Reduce the use of cooper and the project execution time to a minimum by moving field labour
to the factory.
Solution Proposed: Process Bus based on IEC61850.
2. Reduce the time of data collection to SCADA from the current typical time of 1 second to 1
power cycle, providing an effective real time system.
Solution Proposed: Synchrophasors.
3. One communication protocol for all the access levels.
Solution Proposed: IEC61850.
4. Facilitate the data access for an easy asset management implementation.
Solution Proposed: Standard Databases prepared for SCADA, EMS, GIS, etc,
The paper proposes solutions highlighting the advantages and new possibilities that the current
technology brings in the areas mentioned above. The combination of new technologies applied in the
Electrical System is changing the vision that we have on the configuration of the electrical grid and the
elements that can be incorporated.
The integration of wind and solar generation in the electrical system seemed uncertain years ago.
Moreover, today the use of storage systems based on batteries is still in an early development phase.
The replacement of cooper wiring by optical fiber communications is recognized as technically
feasible, but the market is still reluctant to move forward even being aware of all the advantages.
Today a new Intelligent Electrical Substation is possible with more functionality and lower cost than
the traditional ones using the solutions proposed in the present paper.
The Figure 1 gives an overall idea on the integral solution proposed for the Smart Substation.

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 Figure 1. The Smart Substation
2. Characteristics of the solutions proposed to accomplish the above goals
2.1 Process Bus
The design of new substations shall not only have the objective of reducing the initial investments and
application suitability of devices but also minimising the cost of long term maintenance and future
refurbishments. The amount of corrective maintenance actions on the secondary copper wiring
between the primary apparatus and protection and control IEDs as well on all copper connections at
IEDs I/O boards can be significantly reduced by replacing copper wiring and placing electronic
modules (Merging Units) throughout the switchyard and using Ethernet fiber digital communications.
The IEC 61850 Process Bus permits the lifecycle view of design of electrical substations.
Standardisation of interfaces between primary equipment and secondary systems, reduction of the
number of copper cables and the use of pre-connected cables permits the refurbishment to be done
with less effort.
Development of a process bus protection, control and monitoring system (PC&M) should be
approached from the utility enterprise perspective that recognises and addresses needs, as cost
reduction and speed of deployment remaining at the same time reliable and secure. The process bus
system originates from the following enterprise objectives:
• Achieving cost savings
• Reducing project duration and outage windows
• Shifting cost from labour to pre-fabricated material
• Targeting copper wiring as main area for cost optimisation
• Limiting skill set requirements
• Supporting optimum work execution
• Improving system performance and safety
• Using open standard communications

2.1.1 Comprehensive and complete architecture

Each component of the system, including optical VT/CT´s, field (merging) units, Intelligent Electronic
Devices (IEDs), communication infrastructure, signal datasets at protocol level, time synchronisation
method, etc. should be designed after a complete architecture is created demonstrating the ultimate
shape of the system. The primary goal is to deliver switchyard data to the PC&M devices.

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2.1.2 Reliability
When increasing the number of IEDs in the system, the overall system´s reliability decreases. Each
additional element would impact directly in the MTBF of the system; therefore the necessary
redundancy level has to be considered in the final architecture.
2.1.3 Minimal co-dependencies
According to today´s power system protection rules a single zone of protection can be engineered and
deployed with minimal interactions with respect to other secondary systems. This separation has
proved an indispensable foundation of practical protection engineering, and needs to be retained in the
next generation solutions.
2.1.4 Scalability
The system needs to be scalable. It is expected that initially deployed system continue its expansion.
An expansion or modification should not raise any network congestion concerns, or other problems.
The system must be both feasible and economically attractive in both retrofit and green-field
installations.
2.1.5 Testability and maintainability
The system needs to be provisioned to facilitate testing and maintenance. Testing is defined here as
verification and re-verification of a complete PC&M after it has been deployed, repair, periodically or
after a major work such as a Substation expansion, firmware upgrade or component replacement.
Maintainability is defined as the existence of simple, safe and trusted means of performing firmware
and setting changes and replacing faulty elements of the system.
2.1.6 Cyber security
The system needs to be secure from the cyber security point of view. The high data rates of the process
bus traffic and the requirement of very high availability of this data create challenges for known cyber
security solutions such as intrusion, detection or encryption. Cyber security issues, if left unattended,
may either slow down adoption of the solution by creating the need of augment it later for compliance,
and/or may create extra cost and effort for the user when deploying and running the system. The
optimum solution is to develop and architecture, which by its nature eliminates cyber security threats.

Figure 2. Practical Application example for Process Figure 3. Practical Application example
Bus. Merging Units distribution for Process Bus - Architecture for PC&M

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2.2 Synchrophasors

2.2.1 Overview
Monitoring of electrical grid infrastructure is a critical task carried out continuously by system
operators to guarantee safe and reliable operations. Traditional SCADA systems give operators a view
of the system’s operating conditions with a typical latency in the range of seconds and minutes.
The relative low measurement frequency and low speed communications combined with the time
required to execute analysis programs do not allow SCADA systems to handle system emergency
operations in real time. Decisions are made base on static power system models where a trade-off with
accuracy is generally needed.
Communication and computing technologies available today allow monitoring functions with sub
cycle resolution for power systems over large geographical areas. The faster and higher resolution
measurements introduced with synchrophasor technologies, also known as dynamic monitoring
capabilities, enable wide area monitoring at the system level based on accurate and precise data at
high-speed data rates with extremely low latency, less than 200ms.
When applied to wide area applications, typically executed at the operation centre level,
synchrophasors enable operators to optimize system availability, reliability and stability analysis and
operations. Phasor Data Concentrators (PDCs) and the Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs), that
supply control centres with phasor data, are key components of synchrophasor based wide area
monitoring systems.
PMUs connect to the instrument transformers on the power grid and serve current and voltage data to
the wide area monitoring system. PMU function is becoming a standard function in many protection
and control relays. They can stream synchrophasors over its Ethernet ports commonly at discrete rates
from 1 to 120 frames per second. These high data rates allow synchrophasor systems to measure and
visualize the power system at twice the Nyquist rate for a 60Hz power system and therefore capture all
essential waveform data.
PDCs are designed to stream data to Super PDCs using the C37.118 protocol. Recently it has been
defined a new way to exchange synchrophasor data between PMUs and between control centre
applications. The data is transported in a way that is compliant to the concepts of IEC 61850.
Super PDC devices typically collect and archive synchrophasor data at the control and system level.
Super PDCs are designed to run on non-substation rated powerful computing platforms with large
processing and storage capacity in order to support the large volumes of synchrophasor data reported
from PMUs, PDCs and / or Regional PDCs.

Figure 4. Synchrophasors Architecture

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2.2.2 New Applications in Distribution networks
Particular interest are also the new developments and technologies available in the Protection and
Automation Systems that will be used to enhance the transmission planning, design & operation
processes, designing SCADA applications to contribute towards the development of a smarter
transmission and distribution grid.
The main goals identified for the Substation Automation Systems based on the use of the new
technologies can be described as follows:
• Integrate synchrophasors into the SCADA using a PDC (phasor data concentrator).
• Improve the accuracy of the SCADA.
• High speed (subsecond) coherent data in the SCADA.
• Technology enabling the SCADA solution for system-wide applications (WAM, WAP, SPS).
• Time-aligned data at higher rates than using traditional RTUs synchronised with IRIG-B.
• Real phasors available in the SCADA for Power System Analysis purposes.
• Redundant systems based on Standards, providing higher Interoperability levels.
• Interoperability of PMUs.
The advantages of using synchrophasors in the SCADA allows to increase the application range of the
actual SCADA systems to other ones related with new network protection and control functions.

Figure 5. Traditional SCADA vs Synchrophasors Monitoring

Particular interest in Distribution Networks is the development of “Smart” feeders applications as:
• Overview and control of the whole distribution network from the control centre using
improved DMS functionality
• Implement faster, fully and more accurate automatic fault localisation, fault isolation, network
reconfiguration and power restoration functionality.
• More secure identification of “Islanding” in Distributed Generation (DG).

Figure 6. Architecture of a decentralised PDC network

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2.3 A Single Communication Protocol
The implementation of advanced automation logics should take the most advanced resources available
such as modern protection relays based on IEC6150, a SoftPLC able to manage IEC61850 including
GOOSE capabilities as well as synchrophasor protocol. Automation logics include advanced Load
Shedding and Load Restoration based on voltage and frequency, Automatic switching of LV circuit
breakers and Time control for capacitor banks. Synchrophasor protocol can be also used to implement
an advanced fault locator function.
At present, modern high-speed and controlled automatic functions are; Load Shedding, Automatic
switching of LV circuits and Time control of Capacitor banks where the information is distributed
between IEDs in different bays, and a fully controlled Load Restoration is achieved by the softPLC
integrated in an upper system level.
The fact of having a SoftPLC in an upper level enables the system to unify the most complex logics
and to create an advanced interface with the operator where the topologies and scenarios can be
modified under any circumstance as required in the substation. The operator should be able to change
the priorities per feeder, change confirmation settings, enable or disable different functionalities per
busbar and per bay, set different levels for Frequency Load Shedding per bay, set specific days of
week, weekends and time in hours and minutes for Capacitor Bank Control, etc.
2.3.1 Redundancy. High availability automation networks. IEC 62439-3.
The communication in the area of Substation Automation should guarantee no single point of failure.
As a result, some kind of redundant architecture should be available in any system. Moreover, the
most important criteria for any redundant scheme is the recovery time which defines how long the
system is going to be unavailable after any kind of failure. Therefore, shorter the recovery time, higher
will be the availability of the system.
The IEC 62439-3 standard defines mainly three redundancy protocols based on the duplication of the
LAN designed to provide seamless or bump-less recovery in case of single failure of an inter-switch
link or switch in the network. The Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) with faster spanning tree
convergence after a topology change STP/RSTP (standardized as IEEE 802.1D), the Parallel
Redundancy Protocol (PRP, IEC 62439-3 Clause 4) and the High-availability Seamless Redundancy
(HSR, IEC 62439-3 Clause 5).

Figure 7. Parallel Redundancy Protocol Figure 8. High-availability Seamless Redundancy

(PRP) (HSR)

2.3.2 Distributed and Unified Logics

• The IEC 61850 standard together with the logic capability of the modern digital relays
has provided the possibility to implement more complex logics and to distribute them

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 between Level 1 protection relays instead of having them centralised in a single PLC.
This is a topic that has been widely tested and many real projects have taken advantage
during the last years of the implementation of fast logics using GOOSE messages.
• The Level 2 logics in the Central Control Units are dedicated to function not related with
protection and control, but for monitoring of digital and analogue signals, grouping of
alarms, etc.
• As a conclusion of all these experiences in the full implementation of all the logics of the
substation based on GOOSE messages, several advantages have been identified in
addition to use a Unified Control Unit with SoftPLC capability based on GOOSE
messages.
• The architecture as proposed provides one additional level to perform substation logics,
resulting a combined solution with:
• Decentralised logics: Control schemes with logic portions spread between Level 1 IEDs.
When one IED fails, the rest of the scheme continues in service. Presents advantages for
distributed applications like Breaker Failure Protection, Load Shedding and automatic
switching of LV circuits.
• Central Control Units – IEC 61850 Client: Event, Alarms and monitoring logics not used
for performing Control actions, but to provide additional information to the HMI or
Level 3 Dispatching Centre.
• Unified Control Units – GOOSE SoftPLC: Substation Level Control Schemes that have
been traditionally distributed because of the Logic equation limitation of the existing
Digital relays, can be unified in a Soft PLC Control Unit using also GOOSE messages
and interfacing the Level 2 Central Control Unit and SCADA. Used to perform Control
Schemes, such as Load Restoration.

2.3.3 Examples of Substation Automatic functions development and implementation

Automatic switching of LV circuit breakers
The automatic switching of LV circuit breakers for the MV busbars is based on IEC 61850. It is
implemented fully at the bay level. This function is intended to ensure the bus power (AC) through the
automatic selection of the auxiliary service transformer (TSA) which satisfies the conditions for this
purpose. The LV Automatic switching operates the low voltage circuit breaker panels.
From the information of the position of the low voltage circuit breakers, voltage in the presence of LV
circuits and the operation mode of each LV circuit breaker, the function continuously determines the
conditions to operate the LV breakers. Each LV panel receives and sends the relevant information to
the other end via GOOSE messages.
Capacitor Bank Control
The Capacitor Bank Control is intended to improve the power factor of loads energised by the
installation in order to reduce costs with the purchase of reactive power, as well as losses and voltage
drops in the network.
The Capacitor Bank Control is associated with the capacitor bank protection panels in MV and acts on
the circuit breakers of the defined levels. The automatic function runs executing independent daily
programs for each level, normally different, depending on the day of the week. The operator at any
stage of the process can set the day of the week as well as the time in hours and minutes to control the
possible different scenarios.
This function is unified in the softPLC. Thus, the interaction with other functions is integrated and the
interface with the operator can be customised.

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Load Shedding and Load Restoration
The Load Shedding because of power failure and Restoration due to returning of voltage functions are
intended to prevent “sharp energisation” of all the lines of a bus after a load shedding happens.
Instead, the power is recovered in a gradual manner, thus reducing the overcurrent connection and
disturbances associated.
The Load Shedding and Restoration with normalization of frequency is intended to try to prevent the
collapse of the network in case of decreasing frequency below preset values due to incidents in the
production and transmission networks. When the frequency returns to the permissible values in normal
operation, the automatic function also executes the connection of the panels previously switched off.
However, it is necessary that the SCADA or the DMS operator issues a command.
The Load Restoration can be done sequentially on a Feeder by Feeder basis and not only by Feeder
Groups. General settings for restoration as time delay between bays, time of confirmation for normal
values of Frequency and Voltage can be set from the SCADA or the DMS.
Main incomers of HV and MV monitor the frequency and voltage of the busbar. When the protection
devices associated to these incomers detect an over/under voltage or an under-frequency, a distributed
logic starts based on a GOOSE message sent to the bays which will shed simultaneously. For
restoration once main incomers detect ‘normal’ state, a unified logic will be started triggered by a
GOOSE message issued to the SoftPLC. It will then execute the algorithm, taking into account the
priorities and settings, performing the Load Restoration.
2.4 Standard Databases for an easy asset management implementation

Figure 9. A typical application of an Asset Management System based on GIS

Electrical Industry is requiring open and pre-configured databases that facilitate the implementation of
Asset Management Systems based on Geographic Information System (GIS). The current tasks of
these systems can be described as follows:
• Configurable network tracing: By Voltage Class, phase, circuit, up/downstream, etc.
• Audit and event history tools
• Enhanced mapping template tools
• Data editing and CAD tools for mapping, designing, and network updates
• Query, reporting, thematic mapping, printing and plotting tools
• Database extraction tools for importing and exporting network data
• Document links to all objects through a multimedia viewer

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 • Enhanced map navigation and visibility tools
• Business rule manager to manage database triggers
• Annotation Management
• Batch update capability
Several key applications that support the electric utility:
• Standard mapping output – Overhead, underground, and circuit backbone maps
• Regulatory reporting tools – Standard and configurable reports for transmission and
distribution
• Transformer load management – Integrating CIS billing data and potentially hourly meter data
with transformer specifications to provide accurate load curve information to network
designers and planners
• Circuit management QA/QC tools for transmission and distribution

3. Conclusions
The work presented in this paper reflects the actual development of complete Substation
Protection, Control & Monitoring Systems, taking advantage of the modern IEDs with IEC 61850
communication protocol.
The deployment of this technology in the design of a complete solution has shown the following
characteristics:
• The use and validation of a SoftPLC based on IEC 61850 and GOOSE messages to
perform complex and fully customized logics.
• Standardization of the interfaces between the primary equipment and the secondary
systems using Process Bus.
• Reduction of the number of signalling cables installed within the switchyard as well as
between the substation protection and control panel, consequently reducing potential
installation problems and minimising the possible points of failure.
• System standardisation and optimisation of the commissioning and maintenance, thanks to
the capability of testing the complete system and GOOSE based logic schemes before the
FAT using the debug tool of the SoftPLC.
• Easier and faster replacement of protection and control panels and shorter process of
wiring and connection of newly installed substations.
• With the application of these new technologies in the substation protection and control
systems the professional profile of commissioning, operation and maintenance specialists
has been changing according to the technological evolution.
• The quality of the substation works has to be assured with specific training, test methods
and procedures, documentation and skilled staff.
• The content of the training courses has to be adapted and periodic updates will be needed.

4. References
[1] Adamiak M, Kasztenny B., Mazereeuw J., McGinn D., Hodder S.: “Considerations for Process
Bus deployment in real-world protection and control systems: a business analysis”. 42 CIGRÉ
Session, Paris, August 24-29, 2008. Paper B5-102.
[2] Cardenas J., Ojanguren I., Garcés I.: “IEC61850 9-2 Process Bus: Operational Experiences in a
Real Environment”. The Annual Convention & Trade Show of the SEEEI Israel Nov. 17-20, 2010.
[3] López De Viñaspre A., Ruiz J., Díaz I., López A., Nir Z., Trakhtenhertz V.: “Advanced Load
Shedding, Load Restoration and Substation Control Schemes based on IEC 61850 in Distribution
Substations”. PAC World Dublin, Ireland. 2011.