Doble Engineering has been serving the electric power industry by providing diagnostic instruments, services and knowledge for 85 years. Doble provides diagnostic test instruments and technical support services for transformers, circuit breakers and relay protection systems. Doble Engineering also provides on-line diagnostic systems for transformers and gas insulated apparatus. Doble has close working relationships with energy generation and delivery companies, as well as industrial power users, working in partnership to improve the performance of their systems and operations.

Doble's IEC 61850 Testing Tools

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Doble F6150 test simulators, shown in Figure 1 above, and it's predecessors have been serving the power industry for decades by making conventional testing of relays and protection systems easy, simple and cost effective. With the advent of IEC 61850 standard, the testing of Intelligent Electronic Device (IED) and protection systems has undergone a tremendous change. Several stations are being automated using the IEC 61850 standard. All major relay manufacturers are implementing this standard into their products. One of the primary incentives in moving towards this standard is the extensive cost reduction in wiring cost, ease of installation, and interoperability. The concept of interoperability has been a dream of system integrators and utilities. Interoperability makes system integration across several brands of IEDs manufactured by different manufacturers very easy. This also provides the asset owners with several purchase options.

Figure 1: Doble Power System Simulator F6150

 

Figure 2: Typical conceptual setup in IEC 61850 substation

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The IEC 61850 standard is composed of two main parts; Station Bus and Process Bus implementations. The station bus implementation removes the hard wiring of IED output contacts. The closure of contacts is now transmitted in the form of messages that traverse the local area network to which several IEDs are connected.

The process bus implementation is involved with the digitizing of analogue signals from CTs and PTs. These signals are then brought into the control house to supply voltage and current to the IEDs in the form of digitized samples. Both implementations result in tremendous savings in wiring cost.

Doble Engineering Company has added this IEC 61850 support to its F6150 power system simulator. The product (F6150) has also been certified by KEMA. A copy of the certificate of compliance is shown in Figure 3.

By integrating the test equipment with a protection scheme, testing can be performed without touching the connections between the protection relay and other IEDs involved in the substation. This new method provides increased safety and reliability for the protection scheme while undergoing testing. Adding the GOOSE (Generic Object Oriented Substation Event) / GSSE (Generic Substation State Event) support has opened a new spectrum of testing procedures, making the testing capabilities faster, safer and more repeatable.

 

Figure 3: KEMA Certified Compliance

Combining the IEC 61850 with its ability to accurately simulate power system events and evaluate the performance of protection schemes under actual system conditions, with the F6150 Power System Simulator, users are provided with detailed technical information so their protection schemes can be customized when performing tests. The ability to customize protection schemes reduces the fault clearing time while limiting the potential damage and improving the availability of the power system.

Testing of IEC 61850 compliant system composed of individual IEDs is very easy using the Doble GSE software. GSE Configuration software enables an F6150 Power System Simulator to test protection relays/IEDs that comply with GOOSE/GSSE messaging. GSE software supports both publishing and subscribing of both GOOSE and GSSE messages. Figure 4 shows a typical setup for testing IEC 61850 compliant IEDs.

The station bus implementation has gained excellent maturity with most relay manufacturers providing IEDs that support this implementation. The process bus is also gaining popularity and relay manufacturers have developed some prototypes.

Hence, it is clear we need enhanced testing tools for IEDs that are IEC 61850 compliant.

Figure 2 below shows a typical setup that includes the Station and Process buses.

The station bus involves peer-to-peer messaging via GOOSE (Generic Object Oriented Substation Event and GSSE (Generic Substation State Events)

The Sampled Value implementation deals with the process bus. The process bus contains the digitized samples of the analog values from CTs, VTs, etc.

Figure 5: Dialog Box for manually creating messages

The GSE software allows three methods by which GSE messages can be obtained or created from the network to which specific IEDs are connected.

1. Manually

A simple click will present to you the dialog box shown in Figure 5 and you can create either A GOOSE or a GSSE message

2. By using the Discover command

The Discovery command is an excellent tool and acts like a sniffer to get all messages from the IEDs connected to the substation LAN network. It is a very useful, easy to use and a handy tool.

3. From SCL files

You can select a SCL created for the substation and retrieve all the messages. You can add and delete messages as needed

The GSE software also allows saving of configuration files to avoid having to re-create these files repeatedly. Once you create the configuration file, it will be there and if new IEDs are added the configuration can be modified accordingly.

  Figure 6: Discover Command

 

Figure 4: GOOSE/GSE Application of the Doble F6150Network Switch

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Doble Engineering Company

85 Walnut Street

Watertown, MA 02472 USA

tel +1 617 926 4900

fax +1 617 926 0528MKT-SL-IEC_61850_TestingTools-08/10

Doble is certified ISO 9001:2000 Doble is an ESCO Technologies Company

Note Tab:The Notes Tab enables the user to enter any information that is relevant to the test. The user can also attach images and save the contents placed in the Notes tab.

Figure 11: Screen display of Notes Tab

Live Data The software allows you to monitor the Live Data during the test as shown in Figure 7.

By checking the Show Live data boxes, you can view the Live data of all selected dataset items.

 Figure 8: Display of Live Data

Figure 7: Selection of Dataset items

for Live display

The Live Data option is extremely helpful since it displays the current value of all selected dataset items along with the time stamp of the last time the message was received as shown below in Figure 8. Other information related to the items are also listed.

Supported Data Types The software supports the following data types:

Boolean ;Coded Enum (or bit pairs) ;Bitstring, Integer ;

Unsigned Integer ;Floating ;Time Stamp ;

Octel String ;Visible String ;Quality ;

Figure 9: Annunciator Panel

Figure 10: Annunciator Panel Configuration Box

The Annunciator Panel:The Annunciator panel displays the widgets with current value of all dataset items that are assigned to the widgets.

Configuring the widgets is simple and allows for several options as shown below in Figure 10.