Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Telecommunication and IEC 61850 for power distribution systems

More often distribution utilities are looking into the future information and communication infrastructure. One example is the Flexible Plug and Play (FPP) project in Great Britain:

“The challenge

Distribution Network Operators in Great Britain face the challenge of accommodating high concentrations of renewable generation connections on to the network.  Where there is high demand of connection requests, the connection can be costly and time consuming.  Flexible Plug and Play will address this. …

At the heart of Flexible Plug and Play will be a new Telecommunications Platform.  This platform, which is formed of a high-speed communications  and radio frequency mesh network (similar to wi-fi), will enable the integration of Flexible Plug and Play smart technologies and systems. It will facilitate the data exchange and control capability to implement the technical and commercial solutions which will manage the network constraints to enable an increase in the renewable generation connections and the renewable generator developers to export on to the distribution network.

The smart technologies will communicate with each other using open standard data protocol defined by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). The protocol is commonly called the IEC 61850 and is an international standard for data communications between smart devices and information systems for electricity networks.  …”

Click HERE to get an overview about the project.

Click HERE for downloading a nice and comprehensive presentation on the history and the plans for the future … including the use of IEC 61850 for use in power distribution systems. [pdf, 87 pages, 10 MB]

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