IEC 61850 capabilities applied to Oil and Gas industry

The availability today of electricity in Oil & Gas application is a key factor in process production, evaluation and maintainability. The use of IEC61850, a mature communications technology, as a toolbox to develop applications in an open environment is now possible beyond what was permitted by the former generation of communication protocols. The benefits of IEC 61850 have become more apparent since innovative applications of utmost importance can now be materialized as compared to the traditional legacy technology. The paper focus is two advanced applications for the Oil & Gas industry that benefit from IEC61850: - Distributed Fast load shedding, i.e. managing on the same site multiple substations and generation machines. - Data optimization between substation HMI´s and the Control Room DCS (Digital Control System). These applications use GOOSE (Generic Object Oriented Substation Event) messages, a multi-casted message defined by the IEC 61850 standard, to replace traditional wiring between protection relays, digital meters, bay computers etc.