Power quality enhancements

for IEC 61850

April 2011 / White paper
by D. Cumming, Schneider Electric (CAN)

Make the most of your energy

Summary
Keywords.............................................................................................................................. p 2
Executive summuary............................................................................................................. p 2
Introduction........................................................................................................................... p 3
Global emergence of IEC 61850........................................................................................... p 5
Enhancing power quality in 61850........................................................................................ p 6
Conclusion............................................................................................................................ p 8

Keywords
IEC 61850, logical nodes, power quality.

Power quality enhancements for IEC 61850

Executive summuary
Today design, deployment, and operation of modern substations
are changing significantly. IEC 61850 (61850) 1 leads the way, as a
notably improved global standard. This paper supports 61850 as a
worthy vehicle for providing power quality solutions to the industry
while examining concepts for enhancing power quality aspects for
improved functionality.

61850
is the result of years of
research by leading utility
industry experts seeking
to provide a universal
standard addressing
all significant aspects
of modern substation
communication.

IEC 61850: Communication Networks and System in Substations, 2008

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Power quality enhancements for IEC 61850

Introduction
ORIGINALLY centered around automation and protection aspects
inside high voltage substations, 61850s guiding principal of using
modeling and common services to reduce technical functions into
logical pieces (logical nodes) has facilitated 61850 branching out
into many electrical infrastructure areas. The resulting ability to
achieve relatively quick maturity of new functions lends itself well
to a vision of the complete modern substation of the future.

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Power quality enhancements for IEC 61850

IEC 61850 leads the way

as a notably improved
global standard

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Power quality enhancements for IEC 61850

Global emergence of IEC 61850

The integrated approach to system design
and communications has led to IEC 61850
emerging as the dominant global utility
substation protocol standard. With more
than five years of market awareness and
two published editions to date, 61850
will continue to be heavily prescribed
due to the excellent market support from
major vendors. Further evidence of this
emergence can be seen in the myriad
of areas which 61850 has reached.
Working groups have and are developing
extensions of the standard into substationsubstation communications, wind-farms,
hydro plants, and device security to name
just a few.
61850 seeks a unified approach,
presenting a suite of protocols that are
designed to multitask efficiently and
provide support for modern engineering
workflows in the design, deployment, and
operation of electrical utility systems. Fig.
1 shows the traditional substation and the
many protocol choices that can exist.

Fig. 2 shows the same system as Fig. 1

with a new communications architecture
utilizing 61850 and Ethernet.

Fig. 2 _ Ethernet-based 61850 sustation.

61850 also provides other unique

technical benefits superior to traditional
communication protocols.
These include:
File based setup to allow archiving,
maintenance, and the potential for
high level engineering tools to enable
repeatability and ease of deployment.
Unified modeling of functions and a
common dictionary of terms to provide
vendor neutrality and support a strong
basis for extension and expansion of the
standard in the future.

Fig. 1 _ Traditonal sustation protocols.

Because Ethernet is the backbone for

the 61850 architecture, easily deployable
technology exists to simplify the substation
of tomorrow.

Self-description services for automated

discovery and potential for system
validation at commissioning.
The sheer market momentum, coupled
with the functional strength of its integrated
design and technical potential, mark 61850
as the global emerging dominant standard
within electrical utility infrastructure.

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Power quality enhancements for IEC 61850

Enhancing power quality in 61850

Aspects of power quality analysis and
reporting have been included from the
beginning in 61850 though they are not
able to provide a full solution for power
quality users. But, because it leverages
high bandwidth communications (Ethernet)
and an integrated approach to protocol
suites and services, 61850 can be adapted
to provide full support for power quality
analysis and reporting applications.

Existing 61850 Power Quality

Support
In the current edition of 61850 (Edition 2
at the time of writing), there already exist
elements of power quality analysis and
compliance reporting.
These include:
Fault record support - Adoption of the
COMTRADE2 fault record standard for
providing file-based waveforms and the
RDRE (Disturbance Recorder Function)
logical node for notification of fault records
for 61850 clients.
File based protocol service - FTP service
to provide downloading of COMTRADE
fault record data.

2
3

Modeling for some power quality

functions - Logical node support for
providing harmonics (MHAI), flicker
(MFLK) and imbalanced power calculations
(MADV) , frequency variation (QFVR),
current transient (QITR), current unbalance
variation (QUIB), voltage transient (QVTR),
voltage unbalance variation (QVUB) and
voltage variation (QVVR).
Log model service This service can be
used to log values from logical nodes in an
Intelligent Electronic Device (IED). In the
context of power quality, this service could
store the power quality statistical values
over a power quality survey period.
Time synchronization SNTP3 is
called out by the standard and provides
potential for millisecond accuracy. Time
synchronization is important in order to
provide power quality event correlation
between devices.
These elements are important pieces of
power quality but they cannot provide
the whole picture. In other words, the
current power quality support level in
61850 is lacking key features for widely
used applications, such as contract based
compliance reporting.

IEEE Standard Common Format for Transient Data Exchange (COMTRADE) for Power Systems, IEEE standard C37.111, 1999.
RFC1361: Simple Network Time Protocol (SNTP), 1992.

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Power quality enhancements for IEC 61850

Adoption of IEC 61000-4-30

and EN 501604 as a Basis for
Enhancing the Power Quality
Aspects of 61850
In order to bolster the power quality
capabilities of 61850 the approach should
be built on the existing principles of the
standard: vendor-neutrality, application
relevance, and global market presence.
To this end, the obvious choices for
power quality applications are the IEC
61000-4-30 (4-30)5 and EN 50160
standards. These two standards are well
established globally and go hand-inhand to provide contractual-based power
quality measurement support (4-30) and
compliance reporting (EN50160).

3.3 Proposed Power Quality

Enhancements to IEC 61850
Assuming that the adoption of 4-30 and EN
50160 form the basis for the power quality
improvements in future versions of the IEC
61850 standard, the following additions/
changes should be considered:
Modeling for additional power quality
functions - Logical Node support should
be expanded to include all the required
measurements of the 4-30 standard (Class
A) and the key data and counters of EN
50160 reporting.

Time synchronization Time

synchronization should be updated to the
current standard. In some cases submillisecond time synchronization between
devices would be useful for accurate power
quality event correlation between devices.
At this time IEEE 15886 is being considered
for future editions of the standard which
would provide this functionality.
File-based power quality events IED
power quality events could potentially be
developed in the logical node additions
for client reporting. However, it may be
useful to provide some kind of file-based
power quality method through 61850. This
method would provide a record sequence
of time-stamped power quality events to
trace system events between devices (like
a cascading protection sequence [based
on breaker status] or a waveform based
algorithm).
File-based support for compliance
reporting FTP (public) and File Transfer
(61850 specific) services should be
modified to provide downloading of power
quality compliance reports. In addition,
File-based support for compliance reporting
could be developed in conjunction with filebased power quality events or as a similar
but separate construct. This would provide
end user compliance reporting through filebased downloads from the device.

Log model service The log model

service may require some extension in
order to provide meaningful data for power
quality applications.

4
5
6

EN 50160: Voltage Characteristics in Public Distribution Systems, 1999.

IEC 61000-4-30: Testing and measurement techniques - Power quality measurement methods, 2008.
IEEE 1588: Standard for a Precision Clock Synchronization Protocol for Networked Measurement and Control Systems, 2008.

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Power quality enhancements for IEC 61850

Conclusion
IEC 61850 is a powerful standard. Built on sound engineering
principles and technology, it can be leveraged to provide valuable
information in power quality analysis, compliance reporting
applications, and other similar functions. Using widely adopted
power quality standards for measurement and reporting, like IEC
61000-4-30 and EN 50160, could provide logical key support.
By enhancing the logical node support, time synchronization
accuracy, and event sequencing with additional quality reporting
for end users, IEC 61850 can be extended to support many
advanced power quality applications.

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 2011 Schneider Electric. All right reserved.

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April 2011

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