An integral engineering process for centralised protection & control systems according to IEC 61850-6

The rise of distributed generation units as the backbone for a sustainable power supply causes technical challenges for system operation and thus leads to the demand for more sophisticated protection and control schemes. Especially medium voltage grids experience the impact of structural changes and depend on technical solutions to achieve an extensive integration of renewables. While many established functions from high voltage level are available, there is still lack of a suitable engineering concept for the required system integration. This work presents the integral process of engineering, configuration and validation of a novel protection and control system using engineering data based on the substation configuration description language (SCL) as defined in IEC 61850-6. The approach is based on vendor-independent development according to IEC 61131-3 and offers the benefits of straightforward migration to standard hardware from industrial automation technology. As proof of concept, an already developed prototype is engineered and tested with a dedicated protection relay test system. The test results demonstrate the technical feasibility of the concept and highlight its advantages for fast system integration of protection and control functions.