2013. — 8 c.The electric power industry is experiencing important changes in the implementation of new SAS (Substation Automation System), with worldwide acceptance of the IEC 61.850 standard by many utilities, in several scopes of applications. It provides many solutions for the exchange of information, standardization, engineering and integration. Meanwhile, many legacy IEDs (Intelligent Electronic Devices) and legacy SAS still exist, but they will certainly need to be retrofitted or expanded later, requiring such solutions as well.
Important lessons have been learned with the adoption of these new implementations. Practical applications provide useful tips and help build testing guidelines, which can lead to the best practices. Expertise is being built with this state-in-the-art technology. It can avoid some initial difficulties and produce important feedbacks.
This paper aims to provide a return on experience of IEC 61850 based SAS testing practices, highlighting strategies and methods for commissioning tests. Additional network communication and redundancy tests are also described, considering redundancy, topologies, port switching for link failures, time synchronization and other services.
