IEC 61850

Deve­lo­p­ment and imple­men­ta­ti­on of an indi­vi­du­al engi­nee­ring tool
for the IEC61850 engi­nee­ring process

With its two TSOs — Elia in Bel­gi­um and 50Hertz in Ger­ma­ny — the Elia Group is one of the top 5 lea­ding trans­mis­si­on sys­tem ope­ra­tors in Euro­pe. Elia and 50 Hertz ope­ra­te a near­ly 18,990 km long high-vol­ta­ge net­work in Bel­gi­um and the nor­the­ast of Ger­ma­ny, which tog­e­ther sup­pli­es almost 30 mil­li­on end con­su­mers (lar­ge indus­try and house­holds) with electricity.

Elia ope­ra­tes a trans­mis­si­on net­work in Bel­gi­um with vol­ta­ge levels bet­ween 30 and 400 kilo­volts (kV). 50Hertz trans­ports elec­tri­ci­ty in Ger­ma­ny using the high vol­ta­ge levels of 150, 220 and 380 kilo­volts (kV).

“In order to respond to the engi­nee­ring needs that were intro­du­ced with the inte­gra­ti­on of IEC 61850 in our secon­da­ry sys­tems, we were loo­king for engi­nee­ring soft­ware that cover­ed all of our requi­re­ments. We met the H&S deve­lo­p­ment team at a IEC 61850 ori­en­ted semi­nar and they con­vin­ced us with a tail­or made engi­nee­ring tool.

We set up a joint pro­ject in which the goal was to deve­lop an engi­nee­ring pro­cess tog­e­ther that would allow inde­pen­dent con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on of sta­ti­on gate­ways (RTU / DCS) and test­ing of field pro­tec­tion units. This should ensu­re maxi­mum fle­xi­bi­li­ty while con­ce­al­ing the com­ple­xi­ty of the IEC61850 stan­dard from our designers.

The “Elia SCD Gene­ra­tor” deve­lo­ped in this pro­ject offers us the pos­si­bi­li­ty to edit signal lists, crea­ted in the engi­nee­ring depart­ment, to check them accor­ding to the sche­me of the IEC 61850 stan­dard and to recei­ve a ful­ly con­fi­gu­red, stan­dar­di­zed .scd file as a result in the pro­ject. This includes all IED data models of the sys­tem, gene­ra­ted from the signal lists, the cli­ent con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on for the RTUs (gate­ways), and the IEC60870‑5–104 infor­ma­ti­on that is requi­red for trans­mis­si­on to the net­work con­trol cent­re. During the pro­ject pha­se, H&S con­vin­ced us with a high degree of coöpe­ra­ti­on and a flaw­less imple­men­ta­ti­on of our requi­re­ments. Becau­se of a high level of fle­xi­bi­li­ty, we were able to react to new requi­re­ments during the cour­se of the pro­ject, to deve­lop solu­ti­ons tog­e­ther and to inte­gra­te them smooth­ly into our engi­nee­ring pro­cess. The team from H&S con­vin­ced us in the preli­mi­na­ry talks with com­pe­tence and ste­adi­ly increased our con­fi­dence in the work at regu­lar phy­si­cal mee­tings. I am con­vin­ced that some of the solu­ti­ons and ide­as that emer­ged during the deve­lo­p­ment will be mar­ket-lea­ding in the future. For exam­p­le, the con­cept of con­fi­gu­ring cli­ents with gene­ric and thus manu­fac­tu­rer-inde­pen­dent IED models. Also the com­pa­ri­son of IED data models bet­ween gene­ra­ted and real IED models, which is very deman­ding in terms of con­tent and an update func­tion based on the com­pa­ri­son has been imple­men­ted with an extre­me­ly intui­ti­ve solu­ti­on. We can defi­ni­te­ly recom­mend working with H&S, as the enti­re pro­cess con­sis­ting of a high degree of fle­xi­bi­li­ty, per­so­nal cont­acts with very open com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on and an agi­le deve­lo­p­ment envi­ron­ment inclu­ding an appro­pria­te cost struc­tu­re (also for sub­se­quent requi­re­ments) were opti­mal. ”