Interoperability Performance Assessment of Multivendor IEC61850 Process Bus

Substations are increasingly reliant on devices compatible with IEC61850 standards. However, the conformity of a device with the standards does not necessarily guarantee interoperability with devices from different manufacturers. The use of devices compatible with IEC61850 standards presents a challenge to many system integrators, especially due to a lack of familiarity with features, such as generic object-oriented substation event, reporting, sample values, and the need for system redundancy. To facilitate a smooth implementation, all of the features and the data exchanges between devices need to be tested to ensure the system operates correctly. It is important to determine the compatibility of the devices made by different manufacturers. This paper presents a technique to assess the performance of merging units from different manufacturers, when operating with intelligent electronic devices, performing a distance protection function. The performance of the process bus with a parallel redundancy protocol is evaluated using a closed-loop approach involving a real-time digital simulator.