iGrid T&D Advantages

• Migrate smooth­ly and step by step, from con­ven­tion­al or lega­cy sub­sta­tion automa­tion sys­tems to IEC 61850 based SAS with any iGrid T&D prod­uct you need.
• Ben­e­fit from the easy-to-use iCon­fICD tool to cre­ate SCL files.
• Use devices simul­ta­ne­ous­ly as data servers and data clients (all iRTU & iGW).
• Map inter­nal I/Os or exist­ing IEDs (e.g. using Mod­bus RTU or IEC 60870–103 ) onto IEC 61850 log­i­cal devices using the iRTU as data server.
• Col­lect all data in real-time and from mul­ti­ple servers simul­ta­ne­ous­ly using IEC 61850 or any oth­er stan­dard pro­to­col with iCon­trol SCADA or map it to IEC60870‑5–104 or DNP3 with the iGW to report to 3rd par­ty con­trol centers.
• Col­lect data com­fort­ably and fast (under 3ms) with IEC 61850 GOOSE com­pli­ant iRTUe expan­sion units.

IEC 61850 Substation Automation

Using interoperability to unlock new potential

Con­sid­er­ing the ongo­ing dig­i­ti­za­tion and upcom­ing chal­lenges in the ener­gy sec­tor, a future in which every piece of elec­tric equip­ment will be car­ry­ing some type of set­ting and require remote mon­i­tor­ing and/or con­trol might be a lot clos­er than many expect. Man­ag­ing such a large num­ber of data points and com­mu­ni­cat­ing between dif­fer­ent IEDs from sev­er­al ven­dors, required the def­i­n­i­tion of a new, inter­na­tion­al­ly stan­dard­ized com­mu­ni­ca­tion design – mov­ing away from old ser­i­al port pro­to­cols to abstract, pro­to­col-inde­pen­dent data models.

The answer to this was the IEC 61850 stan­dard. Since its first intro­duc­tion, it has under­gone many updates and exten­sions, matur­ing to a point at which sub­sta­tions all over the world are being auto­mat­ed ven­dor-inde­pen­dent­ly in com­pli­ance with the stan­dard. It is expect­ed that the effect of the IEC 61850 stan­dard as a com­pat­i­bil­i­ty enabler in pow­er sys­tem automa­tion will be com­pa­ra­ble to oth­er ground-brak­ing spec­i­fi­ca­tions, such as the effect of html on web ser­vices in the 90s. Final­ly, we can for­get mul­ti­ple pro­pri­etary pro­to­cols and unlock new poten­tial by turn­ing to ful­ly inter­op­er­a­ble sub­sta­tion automa­tion sys­tems (SAS) based on IEC 61850 technology. 

Migrating to IEC 61850 can be simple with the right support

Although IEC 61850 is the solu­tion to many inter­op­er­abil­i­ty chal­lenges, migrat­ing to IEC 61850 can look over­whelm­ing at first. The co-exis­tence of old and new gen­er­a­tion devices com­ing from an increas­ing num­ber of ven­dors with an increas­ing num­ber of pro­to­cols is mak­ing today’s elec­tri­cal net­works more and more com­plex, affect­ing sys­tem design, imple­men­ta­tion and maintenance.

At the same time, the chang­ing ener­gy land­scape and dig­i­ti­za­tion require new ser­vices and func­tions, mak­ing it even more dif­fi­cult to suc­cess­ful­ly imple­ment and under­stand mod­ern sub­sta­tion automation.

Migrat­ing to IEC 61850 and get­ting the new exper­tise to employ­ees can thus be a dif­fi­cult challenge.

At iGrid T&D, our sup­port and imple­men­ta­tion engi­neers will help you over­come this chal­lenge. Their role is to make sure that our solu­tions based on IEC 61850 turn out to be the best solu­tion for you and that you are pre­pared to inde­pen­dent­ly devel­op new IEC 61850 projects in the future.

___

Read more about the use of IEC 61850 in MV grid automation:

– 2011 PAC World Con­fer­ence arti­cle
– 2011 PAC World Con­fer­ence presentation

IEC 61850 SAS with redundant double Ethernet LAN

Exam­ple schema

Flexible and user-friendly solutions for a smooth transition

One of the major chal­lenges of sub­sta­tion automa­tion lies in inte­grat­ing new sub­sta­tion tech­nol­o­gy such as IEC 61850 in old­er, exis­tent sub­sta­tions, where old and new devices have to coex­ist and com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er. Exam­ples of this can be new con­trol cen­ters that have to com­mu­ni­cate with old automa­tion sys­tems or new­ly installed intel­li­gent elec­tron­ic devices (IEDs), which must con­nect to old sys­tems at the sub­sta­tion or the con­trol center. 

Solu­tions by iGrid T&D have been designed for exact­ly this kind of chal­lenges. Devel­oped explic­it­ly for sub­sta­tion automa­tion, all devices devices and soft­ware sys­tems, com­pris­ing RTUs, gate­ways, I/O exten­sion units and SCADA sys­tem, pro­vide a unique range of com­mu­ni­ca­tion pro­to­cols and con­nec­tiv­i­ty options.

The devices can use almost all pro­to­cols to both col­lect and trans­fer data from and between devices and enti­ties and can map all of them onto IEC 61850.

Amongst oth­ers, the com­mu­ni­ca­tion pro­to­cols include:

Our solu­tions can also com­mu­ni­cate through tech­nolo­gies from oth­er indus­tries like mySQL, web ser­vices and OPC UA.

Fur­ther­more, the devices have com­mu­ni­cat­ed with equip­ment from numer­ous dif­fer­ent ven­dors in a broad vari­ety of appli­ca­tions. We have con­nect­ed it all: new and old sys­tems, Eth­er­net and ser­i­al, IEC 61850 and old lega­cy pro­to­cols (like SPA-bus), SCADA sys­tems and intranets, gen­er­a­tion and ener­gy market. 

It is our pri­or­i­ty at iGrid T&D to sup­port the devel­op­ment of your sub­sta­tion automa­tion sys­tems and pre­pare your staff in a sim­ple yet tech­no­log­i­cal­ly sound way. For this rea­son, we used our know-how to design hard­ware that can be eas­i­ly adjust­ed to your needs with our free iConf tool. iConf now also includes the pow­er­ful iCon­fICD tool, which has been par­tic­u­lary designed to facil­i­tate the con­fig­u­ra­tion of IEC 61850 devices. 

With our state-of-the-art prod­ucts we want to make the tran­si­tion to advanced automa­tion sys­tems as smooth as pos­si­ble. Our solu­tions ensure that you no longer need to wor­ry about inter­op­er­abil­i­ty and net­work inef­fi­cien­cies. Our RTUs and gate­ways can com­mu­ni­cate using numer­ous pro­to­cols via Eth­er­net or ser­i­al con­nec­tions and inte­grate seam­less­ly with our intu­itive soft­ware solu­tions, which come with all func­tion­al­i­ties you need. 

With our prod­ucts, you will not only improve the effi­cien­cy of your ener­gy sys­tems through­out the entire life-cycle, but also be able to:

• com­fort­ably react to any kind of net­work change (big or small)
• set-up open and scal­able net­work architectures
• retro­fit third par­ty devices

Our devices are already con­fig­urable and ver­sa­tile by design, but we also pro­vide fur­ther prod­uct con­fig­u­ra­tions and tai­lored ser­vices upon request.

Our gate­ways, SCADA sys­tems and RTUs also pro­vide real­ly pow­er­ful func­tion­al­i­ties like advanced redun­dan­cy schemes, inter­nal PLC automa­tion and high-pre­ci­sion, microsec­ond time management. 

Our Products for IEC 61850 Substation Automation

Thanks to our comitt­ment to advanced sub­sta­tion automa­tion, all devices and soft­ware sys­tems by iGrid T&D pro­vide an exten­sive range of func­tion­al­i­ties and char­ac­ter­is­tics to over­come present and future chal­lenges in the most effi­cient ways.

Although we are hap­py to sup­port our cus­tomers, iGrid T&D is not a ser­vice-based busi­ness. Instead, we strive to pro­vide state-of-the-art tech­nol­o­gy that enables our cus­tomers to set up, oper­ate and main­tain advanced automa­tion sys­tems by themselves. 

Substation Gateway, HMI, SCADA, Grid Control Center Software..

iControl SCADA

• Scal­able and inter­op­er­a­ble in mul­ti­ple architectures
• For all lev­els, from Sub­sta­tion Gate­way to Con­trol Center
• With all impor­tant fea­tures and characteristics

iGW-VM

• High­ly scal­able and pow­er­ful gate­way soft­ware for any serv­er run­ning on win­dows or linux.
• com­mu­ni­ca­tion front-end for siwtchgears, trans­form­ers and oth­er equipment

State-of-the-Art R&D and Advanced Engineering & Product Development

International R&D

• Inhouse R&D on the fore­front of smart grid tech­nol­o­gy, enriched by numer­ous inter­na­tion­al and aca­d­e­m­ic project

Engineering & Development Services

• Advanced and cus­tomized appli­ca­tion engi­neer­ing and prod­uct devel­op­ment for spe­cif­ic client needs. 

High-Speed Busbar Protection by Thytronic Group

Thytronic Group Advantages

• Par­tic­u­lar­ly fast pro­cess­ing time of iRTUe exten­sion units
• Full IEC 61850 sup­port through­out all net­work devices (pro­tec­tions, I/Os, gate­way servers, mas­ters, SCADA etc.)
• IEC 61850 GOOSE and MMS communication
• Many years of in-field expe­ri­ence in a diverse range of applications

Not only iGrid T&D but also our group part­ner Thytron­ic, Ital­ian mar­ket leader for pro­tec­tion relays, is active­ly invest­ing in IEC 61850 tech­nol­o­gy. The nov­el X MORE series fea­tures native IEC 61850 sup­port includ­ing the stan­dard­’s hor­i­zon­tal GOOSE (Gener­ic Object Ori­ent­ed Sub­sta­tion Event) com­mu­ni­ca­tion protocol. 

By com­bin­ing Thytron­ic relays and iGrid T&D mas­ter devices and iRTUe exten­sion units, peer-to-peer GOOSE com­mu­ni­ca­tion can be used over an Eth­er­net-based sub­sta­tion net­work (replac­ing hard-wired block­ing sig­nal paths between switchgears) to enable sophis­ti­cat­ed log­ic schemes for sub­sta­tion pro­tec­tion and automation.

Some of the most wide­ly known and accept­ed exam­ples are inter­lock­ing bus­bar pro­tec­tion schemes, cir­cuit break­er fail­ure pro­tec­tion, pow­er qual­i­ty con­trols of par­al­lel pow­er trans­form­ers and selec­tive arc fault protection.

Inter­lock­ing schemes are par­tic­u­lar­ly pop­u­lar as they take advan­tage of the increased speed and secu­ri­ty pro­vid­ed by GOOSE mes­sag­ing, in addi­tion to being a tra­di­tion­al­ly sim­ple and effi­cient method to pro­tect bus­bars in dis­tri­b­u­tion substations.

So how does inter­lock­ing work? 

When a fault occurs on the bus­bar, the inter­con­nect­ed relays quick­ly coor­di­nate, caus­ing the relays of the incom­ing feed­ers to block the relays of the out­go­ing feed­ers and then trip the CB of the incom­ing feed­er. The same hap­pens vice ver­sa when a fault aris­es on an out­go­ing feed­er and the relays of the incom­ing feed­er are pro­hib­it­ed to act. 

Max­i­mum Speed with GOOSE

Since GOOSE mes­sages are sent relay-to-relay, through an Eth­er­net LAN and thus there is no addi­tion­al delay from inter­me­di­ary equip­ment such as input fil­ters or aux­il­iary relays. The block­ing sig­nals can be sent faster than in tra­di­tion­al, hard­wired inter­lock­ing schemes. Peer-to-peer com­mu­ni­ca­tion allows to send block­ing sig­nals to all relays at once, mak­ing the total oper­at­ing time inde­pen­dent from net­work size, com­plex­i­ty or topol­o­gy.
With the fast pro­cess­ing time of iRTUe I/O exten­sion units you can ful­ly take advan­tage of this speed. iRTUes can direct­ly com­mu­ni­catate with realys, inte­grat­ing ana­log and dig­i­tal pow­er qual­i­ty mea­sures to the scheme with almost no delay.

GOOSE Also Pro­vides High­er Reli­a­bil­i­ty and Adaptability 

In addi­tion to the native secu­ri­ty fea­tures of inter­lock­ing schemes, the oper­a­tional reli­a­bil­i­ty can be fur­ther enhanced by the inher­ent super­vi­sion of GOOSE mes­sages. When a block­ing cir­cuit is bro­ken, unnec­es­sary trip­ping is avoid­ed as the block­ing is not being issued. Instead of ren­der­ing the pro­tec­tion inop­er­a­tive in such a case, GOOSE’ inher­ent super­vi­sion gen­er­ates an alert to ini­ti­ate the maintenance/repair process and react as quick­ly as possible. 

This super­vi­sion func­tion can also be utilised to adapt to appli­ca­tion require­ments. Depend­ing on the object to be pro­tect­ed, one func­tion must often be pri­or­itzed over anoth­er. For instance, it may be nec­es­sary to sac­ri­fice some oper­a­tion speed in order to achieve selec­tiv­i­ty or vice ver­sa. Such adjust­ments can be eas­i­ly made to the con­fig­u­ra­tion of the GOOSE ser­vice in order to obtain the best pro­tec­tion possible.

Why opt for the full Thytron­ic Group Pack­age? 

Aside from the advan­tages that Thytron­ic Group prod­ucts offer indi­vid­u­al­ly, exe­cut­ing a project under one umbrel­la brings many pos­i­tive syn­er­gies, spe­cial­ly in terms of coor­di­na­tion and inter­face engi­neer­ing between products.

This leads to sign­f­i­cant cost and time sav­ings for the cus­tomer, who also ben­e­fits from:

• A sin­gle con­tract for the entire package
• Cost-effec­tive pro­vi­sion, sup­ply and project management
• A sin­gle point of con­tact for the entire project
• Quick­er start­up, comis­sion­ing and engineering
• Reduced cus­tomer risk

IEC 61850 Protocol Suite

Solution Benefits & Functions