A study on IEC 61850 based communication for intelligent electronic devices

The features of the standard IEC 61850 with respect to intelligent applications in substations are summarized. In the past, a substation automation (SA) system typically contained a station bus to connect the bay level equipments (relays, bay controllers) with the station level equipments. IEC 61850 not only standardizes the communication technology used in conjunction with the station/interbay bus, but also facilitates universal SA modeling (Brand et al., 2004). Digital communication interfaces to the process level are additional benefits of the IEC 61850. The digital communication will replace traditional wiring between the bay level devices on one side and the instrument transformers and switchgear apparatuses on the other side (Andersson et al., 2003). IEC 61850 uses mainstream communication technologies like switched Ethernet and TCP/IP. This paper gives an overview of the feasibility studies made with IEC 61850 based digital communication.