2011The International Conference on Advanced Power System Automation and Protection

Study on New Type of IED with Integrated Functions

in Intelligent Substation
LIU Yiqing1,2, GAO Houlei1*, WEI Xin2, TENG Zhaohong2, WEI Peng2, LI Naiyong1 &
XIANG Minjiang1
1

School of Electrical Engineering of Shandong University, Jinan 250061, China;

Department of Substation Automation of Integrated Electronic Systems Lab Co., Ltd, Jinan 250100, China

Abstract: Intelligent substation is the most important aspect of Smart Grid constructing. There are many problems during
intelligent reconstruction of conventional substation, one of which is to add a variety of secondary equipments. To address this
problem, the paper puts forward two distributed configuration schemes of secondary devices using the IED with integrated
functions of process level and bay level in intelligent substation. Compared with the normal configuration scheme, the
distributed schemes bring a significant reduction of IED. Based on the new schemes, the authors design a new type of
integrated IED, which completely realizes merging-unit, intelligent-terminal, measurement-control and protection functions.
The integrated IED is composed of four dominating parts: Main Processor Model, Data Processing Model, FPGA Integrated
Model and Intelligent Control Model. The IED can receive sampled values from electronic transformers and Ethernet frames
following IEC 61850-9-2 from other merging units. The information model of the integrated IED is established according to
IEC 61850 standard. In conclusion, the integrated IED is especially suit for intelligent reconstruction of lower voltage
substation with the characteristic of reasonable design, superior performance and cost effective.
Keyword: intelligent substation, intelligent
measurement-control and protection

electronic

device,

process

level,

bay

level,

merging

unit,

1 Introduction
Intelligent substation is the most important aspect of Smart
Grid constructing. An essential step toward the development
of an intelligent substation is to introduce digitized primary
equipments and secondary equipments.
Data acquisition and transmission of intelligent
substation is quite different from conventional substation. In
intelligent substation, the automation systems involve three
functional levels [1, 2]: station level, bay level and process
level. The information is exchanged among the IEDs
absolutely trough communication network. The normal
architecture of intelligent substation is shown in Fig.1.
Especially, the process level should be separated into two
parts independently, i.e. SV network and GOOSE network.
After years of theoretical research and product
development, the typical configuration of secondary devices
so called Three-layers and Two-networks has proved that
this kind of configuration is good for the safety and stability
of the substation.

Figure 1 Substation architecture following IEC 61850

The gradual technical solution in project construction is a

more conservative strategy [3]. After accumulating
experience of intelligent substation at various voltages level,
researchers try to adopt different configuration schemes. For
considerations of reliability, in strict accordance with
regulatory requirements, process level devices and bay level
devices are independent and redundant at higher voltage
level. At lower voltage level, a function-integrated scheme

___________________________________
978-1-4244-9621-1/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE

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*Corresponding author (email: [email protected])



2011The International Conference on Advanced Power System Automation and Protection

will be introduced into the reconstruction of conventional

substation.
The reminder of the paper is organized as follows.
Section II reviews the typical configuration of secondary
equipments in intelligent substation; Section III put
forwards distributed configuration using integrated IED;
Section IV describes the conceptual design scheme and
software-hardware architecture of the integrated IED; and
Section V draws conclusions.

2 Typical configuration of secondary devices in

intelligent substation
Compared with conventional substation, intelligent substation
possess following significant feature:
a) The introduction of specialized process level devices, i.e.
merging unit and intelligent terminal.
b) Analog acquisition models are distributed on switchgear
independently, and hardwired has been replaced by digital
communication link.
c) GOOSE network carries the messages of switch on or
off and interlock.
Intelligent primary equipment is not yet mature from a
technical point of view. Besides, it is difficult for a huge
amount of existing equipment to achieve full intelligent
reform. Employing the combined mode of intelligent terminal
and conventional equipment is a realistic and effective method
at the present stage [4]. Intelligent terminal is a new kind of
IED, which monitors the status of breaker and switch, and
executes remote command from station controller or
protection relays. Intelligent terminal communicates with bay
level IEDs by Ethernet interface following IEC 61850
standard [5].
The standardization configuration scheme, as showed in
Fig 2, strictly follows the IEC 61850 and other guidance
documents. The electronic current transformer, electronic
voltage transformer, merging unit and breaker control
terminal work at process level. The measurement-control
device, protection relay and digital electric meter work at
bay level. The bay level IEDs receive sampled measurement
values from process bus, and send GOOSE messages to
process bus. This scheme achieves the goal of all-digital
measurement and information sharing. However, the
disadvantage is that it needs to add many secondary devices.

Figure 2 Typical configuration of secondary equipments in intelligent

substation.

To consider the individuality of the protection [6],

researchers present a high reliability scheme as shown in Fig 3.
In this scheme, digital relay receives sampled value from MU
and sends trip messages to intelligent terminal by
unidirectional point-to-point link instead of process bus. The
network of SV and GOOSE retained all the same.
Measurement-control devices and digital electric meters get
sampled value from SV network, and IEDs located in the
adjacent interval get interlocking messages from GOOSE
network.

Figure 3 Scheme of unidirectional point-to-point link for digital relay.

3 Configuration of secondary equipments using

integrated IED
3.1 Application of integrated IED
To meet the requirements of local installation of secondary
equipment and simplify the substation intelligent
reconstruction of conventional substation, this paper put
forwards distributed configuration schemes of secondary
devices using the IED with integrated functions of process
level and bay level.



2011The International Conference on Advanced Power System Automation and Protection

GPS

sampled values by Ethernet switch is a technology trend in

future. IEC 61850-9-2 standard [8] is also a protocol for the
communication of sampled values. It also can be used to
transmit instantaneous measured values by multicast
addresses over the high-speed Ethernet switcher. Different
from IEC 61850-9-1, IEC61850-9-2 standard uses a
non-fixed frame. In other words, the information in DataSet
shall be pre-defined by configuration files and mapped to a
Multicast Sampled Value Control Block (MSVCB). When
packing or unpacking IEC 61850-9-2 frame by FPGA, CPU
is need to resolve the configuration description file (.xml
format)
In order to realize the communication among the isomeric
systems, ASN.1 is used on the Ethernet presentation layer to
unify the data type and values representation of the application
layer. The transmission grammar follows the basic encoding
rules (BER). Referencing to the requests of output data format
of the MU in the IEC 61850-9-2, the Ethernet frame format
(SV message format) is defined just like Fig.5 showing.

SV Network

Bus

Digital Electric
Meter

EVT
Fiber

GOOSE
Network

Preamble

60

Start of frame

80

81

A2

Adjacent Bay

Breaker

Incorporated
IED

IED
Header
MAC
IED

Distributed Installation on
Switchgear

Destination Address
Source Address

30

Control Center

Ethertype
PDU

b) Distributed Installation IED with MU, Intelligent Terminal ,

Measurement-Control & Protection

noASDU

sequence
of ASDU

security

L
V

81

82

smpCnt

83

confRev

Length

84

refrTm

85

smpSynch

Reserved

smpRate

87

sequence
of data

Value
Data
Set

ASN.1 Tag

L=Length

datset

86

Frame Check Sequence

The new schemes can be classified into two scenarios as

shown in Fig 4 a) and Fig 4 b) respectively. Figure 4 does
not include the MMS network between station level and bay
level.
In Fig 4 a), merging unit and intelligent terminal at process
level are integrated in one IED, and measurement-control and
protection function at bay level are integrated in the other IED.
The bay level IED is arranged in the main control room, and
the process level IED is installed on switchgear locally. This
configuration is a partial integration scheme.
In Fig 4 b), a new type of IED with integrated functions of
process level and bay level is distributed on switchgear locally.
The integrated IED accesses process bus by fiber, and
exchanges data with other IEDs. This configuration is an
absolute integration scheme. Taking into account the need to
obtain measurement meter permit, digital electric meter will
continue its separate configuration [7].

svID

Ethertype
(0x88 BA)
APPID
(0x40 00)

APDU
IEC 61850-9-2

Figure 4 Configuration scheme of integrated IED.

savPdu

80

Priority Tagged

ASDU

ECT

Value

...

V=Value

Figure 5 Frame format of IEC 61850-9-2.

Sampled value transmission following IEC 61850-9-2

works well under the situation of synchronous clock (for
example GPS). When external synchronization clock
disappears, the IED is able to synchronize current and voltage
information from different protocols or different bays by use
of accurately hardware timestamp and data interpolation
method. Consequently, the protection function in integrated
IED does not depend on the external clock.

4 Design scheme of integrated IED

4.1 Conceptual design and hardware architecture

3.2 Sampled values stream

The integrated IED implements almost all of the process

level and bay level functions, including merging unit,

With the abolition of IEC 61850-9-1 standard, exchanging



2011The International Conference on Advanced Power System Automation and Protection

intelligent terminal, measurement-control and protection

function. This section will discuss the conceptual design
scheme and software-hardware architecture of the integrated
IED.
Although the logical functions can be divided into
merging unit, protection and so on, the software- hardware
architecture of secondary equipment grows tendency to melt
as a whole [9].

FPGA and communicates with PowerPC by HPI interface.

Sampled values are used for digital filtering and calculating
at the rate of 24 points per cycle after sampling rate
conversion model. Due to hardware multiplier and
multi-stage pipeline, the Fourier transformation for whole
cycle data calculates very quickly in DSP chip. Therefore,
within the every sampled interval, the digital relay can
access to amplitude and phase of analogue current and
voltage. When detecting fault in power system, protection
logical model triggers a software-interrupt after a
fundamental cycle. This treatment can not only ensure
protection requirements of speed and reliability, but also
reduce the computational burden. There is a better
coordination between the protection requirements and
limited resources.
To meet the design requirements that the dispersion of
sending interval should be less than 10 microseconds [10],
the majority functions of merging unit completed by FPGA.
Minimizing the software involved, merging unit increases
real-time of sending sampled value [11]. In addition, FPGA
integrated processing model implements the following
functions.
a) Receiving sampled value frames from ECT/EVT or
other merging units, Sync-interpolation and sampling rate
conversion
b) Decoding GPS second pulse or IRIG-B as global clock
c) Hardware timestamp when receive Ethernet frames
d) Providing dual-port RAM to exchange information
between DSP and PowerPC

Figure 6 Hardware structure of integrated IED.

As shown in Fig 6, the integrated IED is composed of

four dominating parts: PowerPC Main Processor Model,
DSP Data Processing Model, FPGA Integrated Processing
Model and Breaker Intelligent Control Model. In addition,
auxiliary modules, such as human machine interface and
power supply model, work together with predominant
models mentioned above.
Main processor model provides high performance
communication interfaces by means of microprocessor chip
with PowerPC kernel and network peripheral. A total of six
Ethernet interfaces, two 1000M and four 100M, can be
configured as MMS protocol, SV protocol or GOOSE
protocol. Both the task of measurement and the task of
control run in PowerPC processor model. The integral
algorithm for whole cycle data is used to calculate the Root
Mean Square of analogue current and voltage. The
microprocessor indirectly calculates the active power,
reactive power and power factor and analyses the harmonic
content in three phases current and voltage. The task of
remote control gets switch on/off command or sequence
control command through MMS network from station level.
The breaker intelligent control model sends the feedback
messages of the breakers implementation result back to
station controller. The task of self-check locates fault on the
disabled chip and verifies the relay setting or device
parameters by on-line CRC algorithm.
High-speed floating-point DSP, on-chip RAM for
program memory and external auxiliary chips (FLASH,
SDRAM) constitute DSP data co-processor model. DSP
model obtains sampled value through dual-port RAM in

4.2 Information models following IEC 61850

The Object-Oriented Modeling technique and Client/Server
communication architecture are introduced into IEC 61850
standards to simplify engineering tasks, which give more
flexibility to the developer and the user [12]. The
information models of the integrated IED is established
according to IEC 61850 standard. In short, each IED is
composed of one or more server and application. The server
contains one or more Logical Devices (LD). Logical Device
contains Logical Node (LN). Each logical node is a
collection of standard data classes. Logical Node contains
Data Object (DO), and Data Object possesses Data
attributes (DA).
A special logical node LPHD for modeling Physical
Device Information is also always available when modeling
an IED. It is used to model common issues for the physical
device and is different from all other logical nodes in the
sense that it does not inherit data from the common LN
class. The object model always includes one Logical Node
LLN0 that contains the data related to the LD. It shall be
used to address common issues for LD and is independent
from all included logical nodes.
The integrated IED works as a server. After
decomposition of logic functions, all data of device are



2011The International Conference on Advanced Power System Automation and Protection

categorized into five logical devices and corresponding

logical nodes:
a) LPDH.
b) LDMU. The logical device LDMU is used for the
modeling of merging unit, including logical nodes TCTR
(current transformer) and TVTR (voltage transformer).
c) LDRL. The logical device LDRL is used for the
modeling of digital relay, including logical nodes PTOC
(time overcurrent), PTUV (under-voltage), PTUF
(under-frequency), RREC (autoreclosing) and PTRC
(protection trip conditioning).
d) LDMM. The logical device LDMM is used for the
modeling of measurement function, including logical nodes
MMXU (three phases measurement) and MHAI(harmonics
or inter-harmonics).
e) LDCT. The logical device LDCT is used for the
modeling of breaker control, including logical nodes XSWI
(circuit switch), XCBR (circuit breaker) and CILO
(interlocking).

3
4

Conclusion
9

With the development of intelligent substation and Smart

Grid, the researchers meet some difficulties during
intelligent reconstruction of conventional substation. The
standardization configuration scheme inevitably increases
the number of secondary equipment. This article attempts to
process a new type of integrated IED and a distributed IED
configuration scheme. It is especially suit for intelligent
reconstruction of lower voltage substation with the
characteristic of reasonable design, superior performance
and cost effective.

10

11

12



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