Monday, February 4, 2013

Aging Infrastructure drives Use of IEC 61850

The aging infrastructure in the electric power delivery system drives the application of IEC 61850 conformant products. One example is the the application of optical sensors in Mexico: “ … the last decade, over two hundred failures of conventional instrument transformers occurred in the Mexican Transmission Electric System. … Since 2004, four projects were developed about optical current transformers (OCT´s) to identify its advantages and shortcoming … demonstrating that it is now a reality a protection scheme using optical instrument transformers and Digital relays interconnected using a network according to IEC 61850-9-2.”

The project was also presented at the DistribuTECH 2013 last week in San Diego:

Lessons learned from first multivendor 400 kV transmission line protection scheme using optical CTs and IEC 61850-9-2 process bus protection relays

by James Ariza - Megger
Carlos Melendez - CFE
Nicolas Juarez – CFE
Rodolfo Colon – IIE

The presentation concludes:
The first multivendor 400 kV transmission line protection scheme using an
IEC 61850-9-2 digital network for optical CT´s and digital protection has
been successfully installed and is in operation since May 2011.
Correct operation and interoperability have been demonstrated during the
commissioning tests as well as real fault on the line.

A paper on the same project was presented at Cigre 2012 it could be downloaded [pdf, 586 KB]

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