Teaching IEC 61850 Based Substation Automation Through Hands-on Experiences

IEC 61850 is becoming the leading international standard for electrical Substation Automation Systems (SAS) around the world. Engineers with relevant knowledge and skills are in demand in utilities and electrical manufacturing industry. This paper presents a laboratory based instructional environment developed to teach key concepts and practical aspects of an IEC 61850 based SAS. Carefully designed laboratory exercises, carried out in a specifically developed IEC 61850 compliant test setup with commercial and implemented Intelligent Electronic Devices (IED), are used to reinforce the theoretical knowledge. In the test setup, a power system simulated in a digital Real Time Simulator (RTS) provides the IEDs with necessary input electrical signals. Both station and process bus functionalities, as well as the design process, use of various IED configurations and testing tools are demonstrated through hands-on experiments.