2013. — 8 с.The IEC 61850 standard for communication networks and systems in substations allows the development of high-speed peer-to-peer communications based distributed protection applications that result in significant changes in the ways protection functions are implemented. This replacement of functions implemented in a single device with equivalents using exchange of analog and status information over the substation local area network requires new technology also for their testing
The paper describes in detail the principles of different IEC 61850 distributed applications and systems and analyses the factors that will affect their performance. The definitions of the individual components of distributed systems are presented in detail, including the different possible allocations of sub-functions and functional elements in physical devices. Each complex function actually represents a system with a different level of complexity depending on its design.
Definitions of function boundaries and methods for testing dependent on the purpose of the test are then described. Type, acceptance, commissioning and maintenance testing are considered.
It later discusses the requirements and principles of their testing. A comparison between the functional testing of conventional devices and testing of communications based Intelligent Substation Devices (ISD) is described later in the paper.
The paper then discusses some examples of distributed applications based on GOOSE messages and sampled analog values from the point of view of the requirements for their testing.
Methods and tools for functional testing of distributed IEC 61850 based systems are presented at the end of the paper. Full, partial and hybrid implementations of IEC 61850 are analyzed. The different steps in the testing process are described. They include the configuration, simulation, operation detection and results analysis.
The impact of non-protection related events on the performance of distributed functions and how it can be covered in the test process is presented at the end of the paper.
