Digital substation online monitoring system has been presented at IEC 61850 Process Bus workshop in Brazil
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Digital substation online monitoring system has been presented at IEC 61850 Process Bus workshop in Brazil

Tekvel together with its South American partner Soltec Corporation participated in Practical Applications of IEC 61850 Process Bus workshop, organized by CIGRE Brasil, National system operator and CEPEL in Rio de Janeiro. In the event Tekvel and Soltec specialists spoke on Digital Substation Quality Assurance Procedures: Requirements and Experiences and showcased Tekvel Park Digital Substation Lifecycle Management System with practical demo in IEC 61850 process bus environment.

On the first day of the event, which was primarily a conference day, Tekvel spoke on the subject of Digital Substation Quality Assurance Procedures: Requirements and Experiences. During the speech it was highlighted that SCD file is a must-have component of digital substation, which provides the possibility for the end customer not only to understand how protection and control (PAC) system operates, but use it as a basis to test PAC systems, perform their refurbishment and scaling.

Alexander Golovin of Tekvel speaking about new challenges for utilities posed by digital substations

It was noted that SCD file must be developed and delivered as the part of project documentation at the design stage and not at commissioning stage, following IEC 61850 compliant top-down engineering approach. In that sense Tekvel Park proves to be the best available tool on the market to visualize SCD file, including IEDs and communications between them via GOOSE and Sampled Values. Using Tekvel Park, customer is fully armed to verify the design and approve it in a most comprehensive way.

Using special hardware modules (which are called Live View Box modules) and approved SCD file, Tekvel Park can be used by the end customer at FAT/SAT stage to make sure that the system has been implemented in accordance with previously approved SCD file and to check that there are no communication failures and inconsistencies in the network. This is quite problematic without Tekvel Park as IEC 61850 communications over LAN are not obvious and are not easily traceable compared to electrical connections in conventional substation. Having Tekvel Park continuously installed in the substation customer gets the opportunity to monitor all IEC 61850 communications in real time and also to verify that PAC system runs in accordance with approved SCD file. More than that, with Tekvel Park installed, customer gets the functionality of stand-alone fault recorder, based on IEC 61850 data, with common triggers and those triggers, which are specific for digital substation.

On the second day of the event SCD file of the IEC 61850 process bus test setup was loaded to Tekvel Park. It provided clear visualization of all communications and an opportunity to verify that all IEC 61850 communications between IEDs, present in the network, corresponded to the ones, described by the SCD file. More than that Tekvel Park provided the way to check if all communications were stable (i.e. that there were GOOSE/Sampled Values packet losses/unexpected delays, time synchronization was stable and etc.). When failures were simulated (for example, associated with time synchronization failures), Tekvel Park identified the problems and signaled about them to participants of the workshop with detailed description of the issues. The performance of process bus protection and control IEDs has also been tested during the workshop. Capable of waveform recording, Tekvel Park captured fault recordings on the basis of Sampled Values and GOOSE packets, available in the network. It has been possible to analyze the behavior of process bus IEDs simultaneously, check that all protection IEDs operated properly and also check and compare their performance.

Fault analisys for digital substation with IEC 61850 using Tekvel Park

Participants of the workshop noted the innovative approach of visualizing GOOSE and Sampled Values communications, implemented in Tekvel Park, as well as the features of continuous real-time monitoring of IEC 61850 communications and their verification against approved SCD file. As a result of the meetings with the representatives of local utilities, application of Tekvel Park has been planned in several digital substations to be implemented in Brazil.