Testing protection relays based on IEC 61850 in Substation Automation Systems

IEC 61850 standard has achieved the required development for the communication in the Substation Automation Systems (SASs) by allowing to apply the high-speed peer-to-peer communications that is the basis of metering, control and protection applications in SASs. Nevertheless, an appropriate test method for performance testing of IEC 61850 compatible with protection relays and systems is an urgent need to ensure the protection functions of relays will operate as designed. This paper reviews requirements (software and physical devices) of the conventional protective relay testing and the performance testing of IEC 61850 based-relays. It also describes a comparison between the functional testing of conventional IEDs and testing of communications based IEDs.