Novel IEC 61850-based off-site engineering and validation methodology for protection, automation, and control systems

The IEC 61850 standard has driven the development of power systems Protection, Automation, and Control Systems (PACS) over the past years. Although it is well-known for its communication protocols, several concepts and features are underused. This paper presents a new engineering and validation methodology applying the IEC61850 standards concepts to optimize the project life cycle by standardizing and enhancing engineering and testing. An electrical specification has been defined according to the IEC 61850 data modeling, reducing misinterpretations at the specification and configuration stage. The proposed top-down configuration approach establishes a user’s profile and product naming to eliminate the vendor’s dependability. The validations were performed using modern commercial tools. The results show that the proposed methodology makes it possible to have a reliable engineering process where the output of the previous stage provides all required information is independent of the next one. The project naming approach makes it possible to validate the system integration based on the agnostic system specification files in an early project stage. Thus, the protection devices and supervision systems can be validated independently, reducing integration issues in the later stages without affecting interoperability and making it possible to achieve interchangeability.