IEC 61850 experience in the Portuguese transmission system to date and foreseeable applications in the future — A case study and future outlook

In this paper the authors report current experience of IEC 61850 application in the Portuguese transmission system through the presentation of the Ermesinde case study. Adopted physical and logical architectures, function allocation, as well as engineering tools and processes are described and discussed. In the second part of the paper a future outlook for advanced transmission system automation is presented in terms of opportunities and challenges in the light of current praxis, edition 2 and future developments of IEC 61850.