Italian Norm CEI 0-16 revised – now referring to IEC 61850

The Italian Norm CEI 0-16 has been revised and published end of 2012. The new norm (High and Medium Voltage) refers to IEC 61850 – similar compared to CEI 0-21 (Low Voltage). The norm even requires GOOSE messaging … more to come.

Title:
Regola tecnica di riferimento per la connessione di Utenti attivi e
passivi alle reti AT ed MT delle imprese distributrici di energia elettrica

(Reference technical rules for the connection of active and passive
consumers to the HV and MV electrical networks of distribution Company)

Click HERE to download the norm CEI 0-16 [Italian, pdf, 3.1 MB]

Click HERE for Information on CEI 0-21.

IEC 61850 Goes Power Distribution – Grid4EU Project

The electrical power distribution is faced a lot of challenges all over in the years to come: renewable power, virtual power plants, energy storage, aging infrastructure, aging workforce, security, …

How to get prepared for the future power transmission and distribution system? There are many answers. One is to work in teams. The  European Commission funds projects for major smart grid demonstrations integrating production from renewable energy and management mechanisms active demand management (Smart Grid). The project Grid4EU received a favorable agreement of the European Commission. 27 companies and organizations started the project on 1st of November 2011.

The budget for the project is 54 Million Euro, it will run until end of 2015:

• 6 DSOs (cover more than 50% of the metered electricity customers in Europe)
• 27 partners (Utilities, Energy Suppliers, Manufacturers, Research Institutes)

Website of the Grid4EU project.

Statement from the project leader ERDF.

According to several information I received, IEC 61850 is playing a crucial role when it comes to information models and information exchange in medium and low voltage applications. There is a need for the project partners to be trained in order to get a reasonable level of knowledge on how to implement and use IEC 61850. It is highly recommended to have the training at the beginning – and not when people figure out after years that they have missed to use the standards in the way they were intended.

More to come … stay tuned.

Growth of Substation Automation with IEC 61850

There seems to be an ongoing interest in doing market studies in order to figure out what will be the technologies applied in power system automation in the next years or decades. One of the latest is the following report:

"The World Market for Substation Automation and Integration Programs in Electric Utilities: 2011-2013." by Newton-Evans Research Company

Click HERE for a brief news information found on the Newton-Evans website.
Click HERE for some details from the report from Business Wire.

The number of systems installed in the electrical power delivery systems is much bigger than what these kind of studies show. The news reports: "Respondents indicated a total of 1,567 transmission substations and 5,154 distribution substations in operation as of the 4th quarter of 2010. These represent a 9% sample of U.S. and Canadian combined totals of transmission voltage substations and nearly 10% of all distribution voltage substations."

The power market is a global market - the potential market for IEC 61850 is global as well! The numbers of applications is in the Millions! Check what Enel reported during the recent first European IEEE Smart Grid conference in Gothenburg (Sweden): Enel owns over 0.4 MILLION MV/LV Substations! HV and MV network are remotely operated, more than 0.1 MILLION MV substations remote controlled ... There is a potential of 0.3 MILLION LV substations where IEC 61850 one way or the other may be used in the next decade.

One of Enel's project deals with even more potential use cases of IEC 61850:

Active Control of Distributed Energy Resources (DER) connected to the Medium Voltage network: The project will deal with:

• Realizing an advanced control system
• Implementing an “always on” and standard-based communication solution connecting all the relevant nodes in the network, including DER locations.
• Implementing Voltage Control (at all nodes) and Power Flow Control in the MV network.

Click HERE for the complete presentation by Enel.

Take, for example, the number of PV inverter manufactured monthly by one vendor: SMA (Germany):

"On the reporting date, SMA had a maximum annual production capacity of approx. 11 GW worldwide. This corresponds to a doubling in annual production capacity in comparison to the end of 2009. Owing to the better availability of electronic components, SMA was able to utilize almost fully its existing production capacities in the third quarter of 2010 with an inverter output sold of nearly 2.6 GW. In the first nine months, SMA sold inverter output of 5,738 MW in total" ... I guess this means some 500.000 PV Inverters from one manufacturer (assuming average inverter of 20 kW) !!

Click HERE for the SMA news report.

Taking the monitoring, control and automation needs reported by Enel (above) into account means: there is a potential global market of MILLIONS of devices per year that need "standard-based communication". IEC 61850 has almost everything needed.

In this light we have to look at what Newton-Evans figured out:

"Of 5,154 distribution substations in operation at participating utilities, nearly 36% were reported to be without any automation. Just over one-half (52%) of these distribution substations were classified as Stage 1 sites (having some IEDs, RTUs, and two-way communications). About 12% were reported to be “fully automated.”"

When we talk about "standard-based communication", we have to use a wide-angle lens - not a zoom lens to focus on some substations in the U.S. There are definitely a lot more of opportunities globally!

There is a bright future for IEC 61850!

IEC 61850 provides a lot for the Smart Electrification

The recently published IEC white paper :

Coping with the Energy Challenge
The IEC’s role from 2010 to 2030
Smart electrification – The key to energy efficiency

discusses the need of standards! No surprise, or?

Click HERE to download the white paper [pdf, 1,9 MB]

The paper concludes on page 51:

"The standards should cover connection (especially of fluctuating sources), stability, “intelligence” (required functions of the IT applications controlling the grid), and minimum systemic efficiency as well as how to measure it. Aspects to deal with include balancing demand and generation, power quality, harmonic current emissions, voltage flicker, voltage fluctuation and islanding prevention. The standards should allow for the necessary differences in approach and choices made in different countries; thus some of the resulting publications may be non-normative.
In order to facilitate implementation, the MSB [IEC Market Strategy Board] further recommends the IEC and cooperating organizations to organize a public symposium on what the necessary standards and other IEC publications on the “smart grid” should contain."

The paper states at very beginning:

"As the first IEC President, Lord Kelvin, always said: “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it!”. This statement is especially true here: without measurement you can’t credibly demonstrate energy efficiency improvements. The IEC provides and will continue to provide many of the measuring standards that are the basis for benchmarking, energy audits and compliance assessments."

The edition 2 of IEC 61850-7-4 (Information models) covers already many models of these measurements:

5.10 Logical nodes for metering and measurement LN Group: M
5.10.2 LN: Environmental information Name: MENV
5.10.3 LN: Flicker measurement name Name: MFLK
5.10.4 LN: Harmonics or interharmonics Name: MHAI
5.10.5 LN: Non-phase-related harmonics or interharmonics Name: MHAN
5.10.6 LN: Hydrological information Name: MHYD
5.10.7 LN: DC measurement Name: MMDC
5.10.8 LN: Meteorological information Name: MMET
5.10.9 LN: Metering Name: MMTN
5.10.10 LN: Metering Name: MMTR
5.10.11 LN: Non-phase-related measurement Name: MMXN
5.10.12 LN: Measurement Name: MMXU
5.10.13 LN: Sequence and imbalance Name: MSQI
5.10.14 LN: Metering statistics Name: MSTA

5.12 Logical nodes for power quality events LN Group: Q
5.12.2 LN: Frequency variation Name: QFVR
5.12.3 LN: Current transient Name: QITR
5.12.4 LN: Current unbalance variation Name: QIUB
5.12.5 LN: Voltage transient Name: QVTR
5.12.6 LN: Voltage unbalance variation Name: QVUB
5.12.7 LN: Voltage variation Name: QVVR

Click HERE for the preview of IEC 61850-7-4 (first 20 pages) to see the complete list of Logical Nodes defined.

If there is any (measurement) information found in real electrical system not yet modeled and standardized, you can define extension according to well defined extension rules in IEC 61850-7-1 (name space concept).

There is no need to define another series of (information models and information exchange) standards for electrical grids.

ABB uses IEC 61850 for integrated power and process control in Greece

ABB has won in December 2009 an order worth $26 million from Hellenic Petroleum SA to provide an integrated power and automation system for the upgrade of Hellenic Petroleum’s Elefsina refinery, west of Athens. The environmentally friendly refinery will manufacture products in accordance with best in class technology and global standards to minimize environmental impact.

ABB will install a fully automated power management and load shedding system based on the 800xA automation platform and IEC 61850 compatible communication networks. Integrating the electrical and automation system on the common 800xA platform provides additional benefits including reduced maintenance, engineering and overall lifecycle costs.

Click HERE for the full press release.

IEC 61850 Hands-on Training in Australia (December 2009)

IEC 61850 is the global standard for Power System Automation (generation, transport, distribution ... high, medium and low voltage levels). It allows for an open and “future proof” design, different architectures and possibilities to combine products from multiple vendors. In order for users and system integrators to utilize the benefits of IEC 61850 it is necessary for power utilities, integrators and vendors to educate their most crucial asset – People; and to start the migration to IEC 61850.

The popular STRI and NettedAutomation hands-on training provides both theory and practice on the application of IEC 61850 in a substation. During the training we follow the planning, design and engineering process for real applications all the way to configuration and testing on a real multivendor test installation. We believe real understanding is the result of both knowledge and hands-on experience. Therefore the training offers a unique combination of presentations, demonstrations and practical workshops in smaller groups.

Many utility experts have been trained, as TERNA (Italy):

The interest in performing such an event in Australia is high. We are right now negotiating with some utilities to fix the content, dates and locations.

Tentative locations and dates for 3 day events:

Brisbane (Australia): 30 November - 02 December 2009
Sydney (Australia): 02-04 December 2009

Click HERE for the tentative program and other details [pdf].

By end of August 2009 it is expected to announce the final contents, locations and dates.

Distribution Automation or Remote Control?

Distribution Automation is one of the crucial technologies that build the backbone of the "SmartGrid" or "SmarterGrids". The future power delivery system will be based on more Automation at the lower voltage levels than before. Substation Automation is in place for High and Medium Voltage networks - usually Low Voltage networks are not really automated. They are protected by Protection Relays and controlled remotely by RTUs (Remote Terminal Units).

The automation functions for distribution networks is now being added to remote control either as local automation through auto-recloser and self-sectionalizing or via decision support tools. Distributed monitoring and control is the foundation to Distribution Automation - to improve the reliability of the network and to keep the aging infrastructure running. An aged transformer needs special attention to extend his life time, e.g., by preventing over loads and other stress situations.

The basis of automation are sensors that provide precise measurements - mainly of the ac current. There are first IEC 61850 compliant IEDs available that provide measurements and calculated values for LV and MV automation applications.

Click HERE [pdf] for information of Powersense or HERE for measurement units from Camille Bauer. More to come ...