How to get prepared using IEC 61850?

How to get prepared using IEC 61850? This is one of the crucial questions these days. Fortunately there is an increasing number of organizations that understand the challenge with the IEC 61859 technology – and get training and education.

The A.C. electric power system is a very dynamic physical system. Could you remember the exam on Electro Dynamics when you were a student? Oh, don’t remind you … it was (is) a horror for many electrical engineers – also for me. Even some 40 years later, we have the same challenge with the dynamics of the electrical system. It is more complex these days because of the integration of thousands and millions of “power stations” into the system. The need for a good base knowledge of the electric system COMBINED with the need to get familiar of using an increasing information exchange to monitor and control the electrical system will be the prerequisites for the future electrical engineers.

I  have seen several utilities, vendors, and institutes that are very serious when it comes to the use of IEC 61850 based IEDs in substation designs. A lot of money has been invested in building network simulation systems that can be used in a lab to test IEC 61850 based protection, control and remote monitoring schemas. This is the only way to prove the concepts for a particular application domain. The financial situation of many utilities does not allow to invest into a comprehensive lab.

The education of students is very crucial. I was quite happy to read about a new lab at the Victoria University (VU) in Melbourne. They are “about to become a cornerstone for integrating smart grid technology into Australia’s electricity supply market, with the development of one of the world’s only (if not first) Zone Substation Simulator Centre (VZSSC).

The Centre will simulate 66 to 22 KV substation environments (specifically a two-transformer zone substation with dual MV buses), control and protection schemes using the IEC 61850 technology standard for the automation and control designs.
Whilst a breaker and a half configuration will define the sub-transmission side, the protection and control setup will encompass a specific X & Y protection scheme.”

Congratulation to Dr Akhtar Kalam and Graeme McClure that succeeded in convincing enough people to spend money to make this happen!

There is another group of people that need education in IEC 61850: Senior and junior protection and electrical engineers that have long term experience in substation automation, protection, and remote access.

Many of these engineers may have heard some stories about the use of IEC 61850 for power systems – but may have only a chance to read the many parts of the IEC 61850 standards … good luck. Reading the standards? It is more efficient to get a training conducted by senior engineers that could help you to speed up.

Click HERE to see what two senior engineers provide: Protection engineer Andrea Bonetti (FMTP) and communication engineer Karlheinz Schwarz.

Click HERE for a full description of the lab at the Victoria University (VU) in Melbourne.

Additional information of using IEC 61850 and IEC 61499 in Distributed Power Systems .. zone substations …:

Distributed Power System Automation With IEC 61850, IEC 61499, and Intelligent Control (Neil Higgins, Member, IEEE, Valeriy Vyatkin, Senior Member, IEEE, Nirmal-Kumar C. Nair, Senior Member, IEEE, and Karlheinz Schwarz, Member, IEEE; IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN, AND CYBERNETICS, 2010)

Multi-agent Smart Grid Automation Architecture based on IEC 61850/61499 Intelligent Logical Nodes (G. Zhabelova, V. Vyatkin, Senior Member IEEE; IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, 2011)