Enhancements to coordinated control and protection system functionality

There are many commercially available substation-based systems which provide effective acquisition, storage, management and display of data relating to the behaviour of both the primary and associated secondary systems. However, many systems do not go beyond this level of functionality in that they do not offer significant support in the task of analysing and rationalising the acquired data. Often electric utilities rely on experienced staff to perform a diagnosis relating to the behaviour of the primary and/or secondary systems based upon the observed data. If appropriate interfaces were available, the aforementioned data acquisition and presentation capabilities of modern substation hardware could be utilised in order to provide input to advanced, substation-resident functions responsible for providing quality operational and diagnostic information to the relevant personnel. This paper describes the evolution of such functions and emphasises how there is a fundamental requirement for the availability of “open” communications and interfacing facilities if such functions are to be cost-effectively implemented. It is shown, through descriptions and examples of operation, how functions, integrated within a manufacturer´s substation control hardware and operating on both telemetry and analogue measurement data, can extract useful information, which can in turn he used to operate the local substation and the power system at large in a more effective manner