Now IEC 61850 is widely deployed, many European utilities are turning their attention to full optimisation of their systems to drive their IEC 61850 cost and functionality advantage to the next level.
One such utility is Norway’s Statnett. Active with IEC 61850 for some years Statnett is now testing the technical and financial viability of Process Bus based digital substations to drive the next phase of their IEC 61850 deployments.
This week we caught up with Rannveig LLøken, senior specialist control and protection at Statnett, who is scheduled to speak on conference day one of IEC 61850 Global 2018, on the subject of: Implementing IEC 61850 in next generation digital substations.
Rannveig explained: “In our R&D Digital Substation pilot project, Statnett is investigating the use of IEC 61850 9-2 process bus in a Digital Substation Automation and Protection System (DSAS) to identify new cost and functionality advantages and determine what benefits can be applied to future substation deployments.
“Our objective is to challenge the traditional Substation Automation and Protection System (SAS) design principles and investigate the feasibility of new design concepts, as well as their operational efficiency. New principles investigated include the use of one common Intelligent Electronic Device (IED) for protecting and controlling two transmission lines and embedding protection and control functions to a Linux computer capable of protecting and controlling multiple transmission lines.
“At IEC 61850 Global 2018 I will share the results of our investigations to date and share our roadmap for the large scale deployment of these concepts going forward.”
Rannveig’s will be one of 14+ utility case-studies scheduled to take place at IEC 61850 Global 2018. Alongside the case-study programme, the have a number of technology innovation panel discussions, a series of end-user focused round table discussions, live demo labs of the latest 61850-enabled tools and technologies, a solution zone displaying state of the art solutions, and an evening networking forum open to all participants.