Fault Location in Overhead Power Lines Using the IEC61850 International Protocol

Power utilities over the past decade have been fortunate enough to perfect their operations and business process automation due to advances in communication protocols, network technologies and substation equipment. The majority of utilities have already implemented the IEC61850 protocol into their existing framework, but it is anticipated that within the next 10 to 15 years all substations worldwide will eventually undergo the transformation. This will ultimately lead to low level stockpiling of auxiliary equipment, ample use of Ethernet technologies, increased interoperability between vendor specific IEDs and the ability to analyse various real-life fault scenarios via the use of SCADA. However, more prospects are still available in order to meet engineering requirements, especially in the field of algorithm derivation. The authors of this paper aim to overview a number of Substation Automation aspects with the intent of evaluating the pros and cons of the IEC61850 protocol. The authors provide an original configuration flow of the processes required to achieve interoperability, before giving insight into different types of IED operating characteristics and fault locator algorithms. The derivation of an unsymmetrical single phase-to-ground fault is also exposed using a differential equation algorithm. The targeted audience of this paper includes researchers, automation engineers and protection engineers either with underlying knowledge of the IEC61850 protocol or higher