JEC 61850 - A Practical Application Primer for Protection Engineers

This paper reviews concepts proposed by the IEC 61850 standard; protection and control (P&C) aspect in particular. The standard describes building blocks meant to facilitate the general idea of migrating traditionally hard-wired P&C connections and configurations into the realm of software, while opening considerable opportunities for engineering and labor savings. The underlying principle is that the newly introduced complexity resides in software, and therefore, new software tools will reduce or eliminate some of it, simplifying both the engineering and deployment, thus resulting in a substantial net gain. IEC 61850 has received considerable attention in recent years, but vast majority of publications are written around the theme of the intelligent electronic device (IED), and rest at introducing the concept, reviewing selected details of IED implementations, and focusing on anticipated advantages. This paper is written for a traditional P&C engineer and reviews important practical questions that need to be answered, solutions worked out, and tools developed before the IEC 61850 concept could see its all-inclusive implementation