1.

IEC 61850-9-2 Process Bus and Its Impact on Power System Protection and Control Reliability

High-speed network communications have already changed the world we live in and are poised to bring
significant changes to the way we control and operate the power system. To be successful, new technology requires
industry-wide agreement on diverse topics such as system architecture, communications infrastructure, data
models, and high layer protocols. This agreement is being achieved through industry standards with IEC 61850 and
IEEE C37 series have taking the lead role. It is very important to note that standards are becoming increasingly
interdependent and voluminous. For example, the term IEC 61850 currently encompasses 14 individual standards
and is further dependent on hundreds of other standards (notably IEEE 802.xx and associated RFC series), which are
necessary to ensure open system architecture and individual device interoperability. This paper focuses on a small
segment of IEC 61850 known as the Process Bus or Sampled Values (SV) [1][2][3], defined in IEC 61850-9-2. It looks
at the overall system reliability, required standard clarifications, and associated hardware implementation options
that may be needed in order to successfully deploy Process Bus technology.

The core concept of this standard is the creation of a clear distinction between the physical and the logical
world. Four basic building blocks are defined: • Logical nodes • Logical connections • Functions • Physical devices A
logical node is intended to be the smallest part of a function. Logical nodes exchange data with their peers, and are
grouped together into Functions by using various Logical Connections. Mapping of Logical Nodes and Functions into
Physical Devices is totally free and can ideally be optimized to match individual user applications. Multiple functions
can be mapped into a single physical device or distributed across multiple devices.

The logical node concept can also be used to simplify our Process Bus solution. Instead of approaching
implementation from the physical device perspective (as we did in our discussion about merging units), we can start
by looking at the optimal location for each of the various protective elements (also called Protection Logical Nodes in
IEC 61850 terminology). For example, a simple protective element such as instantaneous overcurrent (IEEE/ANSI
device function number 50) requires only one set of three-phase current measurements and would ideally be placed
in the immediate vicinity of the circuit breaker. Similar logic applies to the time overcurrent element (IEEE/ANSI
device function number 51). By locating these elements in the vicinity of the breaker, we would take advantage of
the physical proximity of the instrument transformers and the breaker control mechanism. Wiring would be
localized, with dc power and Ethernet LAN being the main connections with the rest of the world. Bringing in
additional voltage signals (from nearby PTs) would allow the possibility of adding a distance protection element
(IEEE/ANSI device function number 21), creating a fairly complete protection scheme.

Process Bus technology described in IEC 61850-9-2 offers a variety of new and exciting possibilities in
designing the next generation of Ethernet-based protection and control systems. As with any new technology,
Process Bus approach raises a distinct set of issues that have to be overcome in order to achieve wide acceptance of
this technology. We are very excited about the possibilities opened by the new standards and have used this paper
as an open forum to 6 discuss steps that are needed to make the IEC 61850 Process Bus technology successful. In our
view, Process Bus technology has to do the following: • Meet or exceed currently accepted reliability levels. • Be
flexible enough to meet customer expectations. • Allow for the distribution of processing intelligence. • Have
communications-based protection reliability evaluated on a per-function basis. • Be able to call upon protective
relays to act as both process bus data consumers and process bus data sources. • Provide easy support for both
analog (wired) and digital (SV) interfaces. • Handle a gradual acceptance of Process Bus technology. This work is also
intended to inform users about new terms and technologies being investigated by various standards bodies. All of
the technical issues raised in the paper are either already solved or being currently addressed by the incoming
standards, thus promising a bright future for the SV-based Process Bus.
 2. Impact of IEC 61850-9-2 Standard-Based Process Bus on the Operating Performance of Protection IEDS: Comparative
Study

Investigations on the performance of the Process Bus have been of interest to researchers. Ferrari et al.,
(2012) carried out an analysis on the performance of the Process Bus when non IEC 61850 devices are used
together with protective IEDs. The preliminary results supported the possibility to mix different real-time data
streams on the Process Bus. Similarly, Ingram et al., (2012) showed that a multi-function Process Bus can coexist
on a shared Ethernet network. The results demonstrated that fully switched Ethernet network with full duplex
connections did not experience collisions. However, the research evaluated the Process Bus from a data network
perspective rather than examining the performance of the protection functions of the Process Bus IEDs. This is of
particular interest because of the need to verify the performance of the IEC 61850-9-2 Process Bus technology in
order to allay the fears of stakeholders.

In conventional systems, the analogue input module of the protection relay provides the interface between
the onboard processor board(s), and the voltage and current quantities coming into the protection relay from
the instrument transformers like Current Transformers (CTs) and Voltage Transformers (VTs) located in the
substation switchyard. These analogue signals are passed through anti-alias filters before being multiplexed onto
an Analogue-to-Digital Converter (ADC) chip. The ADC provides a sampled data stream output which is
transmitted to the protection module via the data bus. This is as shown in Figure 1.

Fig.1
Generally, performance testing has to do with device evaluation in order to establish the boundaries of their
capabilities. While IEC 61850 Part-10 specifies the approach for conformance testing, no procedure is specified for
performance and interoperatibility tests (Udren et al., 2007). The laboratory-scale experiment in this paper made
use of the Real-Time Digital Simulator (RTDS), IEC 61850-9-2 protection IED (IED-A), hardwired protection IED (IED-
B), GPS satellite clock, and industrial network switches. A typical power system network is modelled and simulated in
real-time using the RTDS in a hardware-in-the-loop configuration with the protection IEDs. The IEC 61850-9-2
protection IED is regarded as the main Device Under Test (DUT) and is configured for distance protection of a
transmission line. Similarly, a hardwired protection IED which is used for comparison is also configured for distance
protection for the same line and is connected to the same local end as the DUT. Both protection IEDs and the RTDS
are synchronized to the GPS. The input supply to the first protection IED is the Sampled Values of the three phase
and neutral currents and voltages, while the input supply to the second protection IED is from hardwired
conventional analogue inputs obtained from Current Transformer (CT) and Voltage Transformer (VT) modelled
within the RSCAD draft case.

The implementation of the IEC 61850 standard has indeed opened up a wide range of applications. In order
to boost the confidence of engineers in these new applications, it is necessary to carry out performance testing
alongside conformance testing and interoperability testing. This study has evaluated the performance of the
distance protection function of an IEC 61850-9-2 Process Bus based IED. A comparison was made with the
performance results obtained from a conventional IED also configured for distance protection and connected to the
same local end where the Process Bus IED was connected to. The result of the various tests carried out
demonstrated that both IEDs have similar performance with similar operating time response and tripping times for
all zones of protection. The dependability and security of the IED was also verified.
3. Phasor measurement based on IEC 61850-9-2 and Kalman–Filtering

The concept of utilizing phasors in computing power quantities back dates to 1916 when Proteus Steinmetz
published a paper on a mathematical technique for analysing AC networks [1]. In 1992, Jay Murphy of
Macrodyne developed Proteus’s technique into the estimation of synchronized phasors to an absolute time
reference and introduces his Phasor Measurements Unit (PMU). Later, tests have been conducted on this unit
[2,3], which determined the accuracy as 0.01 degree for phase angle at 60 Hz and 0.1% for the magnitude. The
time-synchronized phasor has been firstly defined and codified in the IEEE 1344 and later to be voted as IEEE
C37.118 in 2005 [4]. In this standard, the parameters deviation of the input power signals has been restricted by
allowable error over a range of operating conditions. This allowable error describes the phasor difference
between an estimated and a theoretical value.

For purposes of estimating phasors in substation, the practice of using stand-alone PMUs for producing
phasors at process level can be replaced by KF function at bay level. The KF can accomplish the function of
estimation for all SMVs received from measuring points (i.e. MUs) in the substation. Estimating the phasors at
bay level can help in reducing the cost of installing new dedicated physical PMUs at each measurement point or
may supersede the PMUs installed at process level. Computation of phasors using KF can be accomplished by
updating its states by A. Abdolkhalig, R. Zivanovic / Measurement 50 (2014) 126–134 127 the time-critical IEC
61850-9-2 Sampled Measured Values streamed from the various MUs at substation Process-Bus. In this way, the
changes in amplitude and phase angle during transient phenomena in substation can be well tracked. The KF
model should satisfy the phasor measurement allowable errors according to IEEE C37.118 standard. The IEEE
C37.118 standard proposes several reporting rates (frames per second) with maximum reporting rates of
60/second at 60 Hz nominal power frequency. Higher rates of 100/second and 120/second have been
encouraged. It may be difficult to report at higher rates with the classical phasor estimator. Classical phasor
estimators employ DFT to estimate phasors. When DFT is employed for estimating signals in real-time, time
windowing should be considered. Results of DFT can be considered accurate only if the following assumptions
are satisfied: (1) periodic and stationary waveforms, (2) the sampling frequency should be greater than twice of
the highest frequency of the signal, (3) number of periods in each time window should be integer, (4) each
frequency in the signal should be integer multiple of the frequency resolution read out by the time windowing.
DFT is not suitable for time–frequency studies because of the time and frequency resolutions trade-off. The
functionality and the accuracy of the estimated phasor depend on how many samples (N) per cycle (window
size) are used. Also to increase the reporting rate, the time window size should be decreased. Decreasing time
window size increases the time resolution, but frequency resolution is decreased and vice versa. Instead of using
DFT, KF estimates recursively with every new sample received. With N samples, there are N phasor estimations.
The KF is able to solve nonlinear system in the following discrete form:

Implementation and performance evaluation during steady state and transient phenomena of a phasor
estimator based on KF and IEC 61850-9-2 are presented in this paper. Studying the frequency response of the
classical estimator (DFT) and the proposed one (KF) has been done which indicated capability of the proposed
one to attenuate and reject harmonics at frequencies other than the fundamental frequency. Testing phasor
estimator during transients has been carried out in real-time through applying step changes in amplitude and
phase angle. Test results shown that, the traffic can handle about 100 MUs with latency value under the
allowable maximum value by the IEC 61850 standard and the estimated phasors are within the values of
allowable TVE defined in IEEE C37.118 standard.
4. Technical Overview and Benefits of the IEC 61850 Standard for Substation Automation
The major architectural construct that 61850 adopts is that of “abstracting” the definition of the data
items and the services, that is, creating data items/objects and services that are independent of any
underlying protocols. The abstract definitions then allow “mapping” of the data objects and services to any
other protocol that can meet the data and service requirements. The definition of the abstract services is
found in part 7.2 of the standard and the abstraction of the data objects (referred to as Logical Nodes) is
found in part 7.4. In as much as many of the data objects are made up of common pieces (such as Status,
Control, Measurement, Substitution), the concept of “Common Data Classes” or “CDC” was developed which
defined common building blocks for creating the larger data objects.
Legacy protocols have typically defined how bytes are transmitted on the wire. However, they did
not specify how data should be organized in devices in terms of the application. This approach requires
power system engineers to manually configure objects and map them to power system variables and low-
level register numbers, index numbers, I/O modules, etc. IEC 61850 is unique. In addition to the specification
of the protocol elements (how bytes are transmitted on the wire), IEC 61850 provides a comprehensive
model for how power system devices should organize data in a manner that is consistent across all types and
brands of devices. This eliminates much of the tedious non-power system configuration effort because the
devices can configure themselves. For instance, if you put a CT/VT input into an IEC 61850 relay, the relay
can detect this module and automatically assign it to a measurement unit without user interaction. Some
devices use an SCL file to configure the objects and the engineer need only import the SCL file into the device
to configure it. Then, the IEC 61850 client application can extract the object definitions from the device 3
over the network. The result is a very large savings in the cost and effort to configure an IEC 61850 device.
The abstract data and object models of IEC 61850 define a standardized method of describing power
system devices that enables all IEDs to present data using identical structures that are directly related to
their power system function. The Abstract Communication Service Interface (ACSI) models of IEC 61850
define a set of services and the responses to those services that enables all IEDs to behave in an identical
manner from the network behavior perspective. While the abstract model is critical to achieving this level of
interoperability, these models need to be operated over a real set of protocols that are practical to
implement and that can operate within the computing environments commonly found in the power
industry. IEC 61850-8-1 maps the abstract objects and services to the Manufacturing Message Specification
(MMS) protocols of ISO9506. Why was a protocol originally designed for manufacturing used? Because MMS
is the only public (ISO standard) protocol that has a proven implementation track record that can easily
support the complex naming and service models of IEC 61850. While you can theoretically map IEC 61850 to
any protocol, this mapping can get very complex and cumbersome when trying to map IEC 61850 objects
and services to a protocol that only provides read/write/report services for simple variables that are
accessed by register numbers or index numbers. This was the reason that MMS was chosen for UCA in 1991
and is the reason that it was kept for IEC 61850. MMS is a very good choice because it supports complex
named objects and a rich set of flexible services that supports the mapping to IEC 61850 in a straightforward
manner.
IEC 61850 is unique. IEC 61850 is not a former serial link protocol recast onto TCP/IP-Ethernet. IEC
61850 was designed from the ground up to operate over modern networking technologies and delivers an
unprecedented amount of functionality that is simply not available from legacy communications protocols.
These unique characteristics of IEC 61850 have a direct and positive impact on the cost to design, build,
install, commission, and operate power systems. While legacy protocols on Ethernet enable the substation
engineer to do exactly the same thing that was done 10-15 years ago using Ethernet, IEC 61850 enables
fundamental improvements in the substation automation process that is simply not possible with a legacy
approach, with or without TCP/IP-Ethernet. To better understand the specific benefits we will first examine
some of the key features and capabilities of IEC 61850 and then explain how these result in significant
benefits that cannot be achieved with the legacy approach
5. IEC 61850 for Power System Communication

Although originally defined for the communication within the substation, the basic concepts of IEC
61850 make it suitable for other applications in the utility automation industry. This has been recognized by
the industry, and several new working groups have been created within IEC, that are preparing standards
based on IEC 61850 for new application domains.
A. Use of IEC 61850 in power generation In three areas of power generation, IEC 61850 concepts are
used by defining new domain specific object models (logical nodes). The standard IEC 61850-7-410 –
Hydroelectric power plants – Communication for monitoring and control is used for the control and
supervision of a hydro power plant. The standard defines logical nodes for electrical functions; various
control functions, essentially related to the excitation of the generator. New logical nodes defined within this
group are not specific to hydropower plants; they are more or less general for all types of larger power
plants. Further, it defines logical nodes for mechanical functions related to the turbine and associated
equipment and it defines logical nodes for hydrological functions. Another standard, IEC 61850-7-420 –
Communication systems for distributed energy resources (DER), is to be used for information exchange
between DER devices and any systems which monitor, control, maintain, audit, and generally operate the
DER devices. That standard defines the logical nodes for a DER system in general, as well as for the models of
DER equipment like reciprocating engines ("piston engines"), fuel cells, photovoltaic systems or combined
heat and power devices. A third standard, the IEC 61400-25 series defines logical nodes for the
communication between wind power plant components like wind turbines and related SCADA systems. 5
B. IEC 61850 for wide area communication As well discussed in the working groups, is the use of IEC
61850 for wide area communication like communication between substations or communication between
substation and control centres. A report IEC 61850-90-1 will discuss the different aspects of the use of IEC
61850 for the communication between substations. In that report, the following applications are considered:
1. Protection functions like current differential line protection, distance protection with permissive and
blocking schemes, directional and phase comparison protection, transfer tripping, predictive wide area
protection and substation integrity protection schemes. 2. Control functions like auto reclosing, interlocking,
cross triggering, generator or load shedding, out-of-step detection and topology determination of high
voltage networks. From a communication viewpoint, two different architectures are possible. A first
approach is called the gateway approach and uses a relative low speed communication channel with specific
teleprotection communication equipment. This is an approach used today; the only specific is the use of a
IEC 61850 interface for the teleprotection equipment. The second approach is the tunnelling approach
shown in Figure 11. This is the use of a high speed communication link with a direct transmission of the IEC
61850 messages from one substation to the other substation.
It is the vision of the IEC TC57, that in the future, IEC 61850 will be used to collect the information
from the different field devices and transmit this information to the control centre and other systems that
manage the power 6 system. As a first step to realise that vision, IEC 61850 is well received by the industry
as the communication standard to be used within substations. The use of IEC 61850 in new application
domains is also well advanced. The standard for the wind power plants and the standard for hydro power
plants have been approved; the standard for the distributed energy resources will be circulated early next
year. In addition, the working groups are already preparing a second edition of IEC 61850 that is adding
besides clarification many new features that are used for the applications in these new domains. The work,
to use IEC 61850 for wide area communication is in progress. Within the technical reports IEC 61850-90-x,
the issues are discussed. These issues will later be integrated in future editions of IEC 61850. An important
aspect of that work is the harmonization between CIM and IEC 61850.