Introduction of Integrated Protection and Control to Railway Electrification Systems

The UK railway is currently undergoing significant renewals and enhancements to its electrification infrastructure. As part of this, there is a critical need to review future protection and control schemes with a view to reducing the need for substation hard-wiring, together with the capital cost associated with complexity and installation timescales. Network Rail undertakes its own outline design of protection and control systems, and has now developed a design approach to integrated schemes. This paper considers the role of a network operator in producing standard designs for integration, which ensure the benefits of new technology whilst maintaining sufficient design control to provide for interchangeability and ease of future modification. The key issues associated with integration of protection and control systems are discussed, with an emphasis on the processes for design. These are based upon the use of the unified modelling language to describe both the design process and the design itself. The paper sets out a UML approach to specifying an integrated protection and control scheme in accordance with IEC 61850, using a typical railway substation as an example.