E DEVELOPMENTS OF INTEGRATED PROTECTION AND CONTROL IN DISTRIBUTION NETWORKS Peter Watson Jonathan Gibbs Brian Harrison John Leach ABB Power T&D ABB Power T&D Brian Harrison ABB Power T&D UK UK Enterprises, UK UK 1, INTRODUCTION Over the last ten years it has been necessary to extract increasing amounts of data and network control information from the existing electricity distribution system. This has been to support new control techniques and systems which have enabled a reduction in customer disconnection time and lead to a more efficient management of the network as a whole The techniques and systems that have been developed over the years have been as ‘add-on’ schemes. Each of these new techniques require their own data inputs which where typically copies of the same plant status information collected for other applications within the substation ‘An increase in processing power coupled with a reduction in cost has resulted in the electronic relay being replaced with high capability numeric relays. These new relays | include all the protection features that have historically been required, plus the ability to undertake duties that where previously prohibitive in cost or technically not possible such as inclusive fault recorders, software interlocking or sequence switching. These new relays are now frequently referred to as “Feeder Terminal Equipments”, (FTE.’s). Itis through the use of these F.T-E.’s that the design of the substation control and protection schemes has been simplified in construction but simultaneously improved in terms of security, features and reliability 2, CONTROL AND PROTECTION UTILISING ‘OLD’ TECHNOLOGY A typical 132/11kV substation with a conventional protection scheme would have been built from numerous discrete relays mounted on free standing relay panels and connected together to form the required circuit. In turn these relay panels would be connected to similar panels and other equipment (circuit breakers, disconnectors etc) This alone required a considerable amount of multicore and multipair cabling.Mimic panels and the introduction of telecontrol / SCADA equipment has further increased the already large amounts of copper cabling required within the substation, a high proportion of which is responsible for distributing similar if not the same information but to the different control and protection devices. ‘The need for all this cabling is because each device had a specific function and no further intelligence to either communicate the information to other devices or perform additional functions on the information it has. Consequently, each device had to have unique cabling via traditional digital and analogue inputs, each input supplied independently of the other equipment. 3. MODERN PERSPECTIVE ON SUBSTATION CONTROL ‘When taking an overall view of the functional building blocks within a substation (figure 1) it becomes clear that a major simplification of the design can be achieved by collecting the substation plant information once. This information can then be used in a number of ways by different processes and applications, with the same values being propagated throughout the system to wherever it is needed through serial communications. To achieve this approach required the use of a high level of intelligence next to the plant i.e. at the relay position, coupled with a communication system that takes the data to a concentrator within the substation which could then drive the local mimic and act as the telecontrol gateway. This approach has led to an integrated Substation Control System (SCS). The format of this design has been developed over a number of years by a number of manufactures and a large number of substations throughout the world now use this method as a basis, The free distribution of data to all areas of the control system was however either not possible or slow and so time critical applications such as interlocking schemes spread over more than one bay were still implemented in the traditional fashion, While this approach to substation design had gone a long way to rationalising the installation layout further improvements could still be achieved As technology advances, further improvements have been made and some of the shortcomings of this intermediate approach can now be overcome. The next logical step was to enable high speed bi-directional signalling enabling critical information to be communicated between bays/circuits with very short time delays, This allows for the possibilities of enabling techniques and systems to share information enabling more comprehensive techniques to be developed Modem digital technology has now reached the stage that this can be achieved within a substation environment in a cost effective way, and products have now been developed to support the extended features, This latest generation of equipment has resulted in a comprehensive, integrated and co-ordinated protection, monitoring and automation system achieving the full rationalisation of data collection and information distrib within an electricity distribution substation.TECHNICAL ADVANCES The technology used within the substation has been evolving over the years. The most significant development was the numeric relay which enabled software algorithms to be used. This gave two benefits; more flexible protection settings with options such as IDMT or definite time as configuration options, and greater accuracy as the relays were not prone to drift. These relays were also capable of expansion and plug in modules could often increase the relay performance with little or no additional external cabling These relays were then able to communicate with control systems although the early standards were slow. However, remote interrogation allowed controls to be sent via the communications and the start of today’s integrated substation control system had begun. 4.1 Communications Protocols To enable the modern communicating solution to work the relays need to be able to. communicate critical information between themselves or back to the main control station with a transmission time of 20ms. This transmission time has to be maintained for critical information even under conditions of high activity. During a thunderstorm a high level of information may be generated as various faults occur due to the lightening strikes. This information is typically fed back to the control systems in the form of alarms and between relays as part of the protection schemes. A high sustainable level of information in the order of 250 packets per second has to be communicated without degrading the 20ms response time for certain critical information In the event of a direct lightning strike the system may have to cope with a peak load in excess of 250 packets within a short 200-300ms period. The system must be able to still maintain a 20ms response time for critical information even under this level of background activity. Traditional communicating relays communicated at baud rates of 9600 or lower and at these rates the communication of information between devices was unacceptably slow for time critical applications, Further, these relays did not communicate directly to each other but operated in a master-slave configuration whereby a central control system polled for information which was then supplied by the relays. The central system then processed this information and forward this information onto the appropriate destination The latest generation of communication protocols such as those based on LON-Works have overcome the transmission rate problem and allow for transmission rates as high as 1.2 Mbits/s, This has significantly reduced the actual transmission time of a single piece of information and has the dual benefit of significantly increasing the number of Gata items that may be transmitted within a given time period. This has reduced the total time to transmit data in the event of a sudden peak of high activity ie. following a 713lightening strike. To ensure the response time of critical information these protocols can prioritise key data which ensures it takes priority over less important information. The second shortfall with the older transmission method was the master/slave nature of the protocol where all information was requested by a single master device. The use of a peer to peer protocol (sometimes referred to as multi-master) where all items of equipment can communicate directly with each other has also reduced the time critical information to reach its destination to a suitable level (in the order of 20mS). This has enabled interlocking information, for example, to be sent directly to where it is needed and not via a top level control system. 4.2. Transmission Media Early transmission media was based on copper. While the use of twisted pair signalling can reduce many of the transmission problems that the intense levels of interference can cause, the move to fibre optic communication has eliminated them all together. Current glass fibre optic technology allows for single fibre lengths in excess of 1200m which is sufficient for all but the longest communication paths where repeaters may be used. The use of plastic fibres over shorter distances has also reduced the cost to below that of twisted pairs. To improve the redundant properties of such an arrangement the communication paths are arranged in a star configuration (figure 2) whereby the individual links are singular but the loss of any one link only fails that particular device. In the event of multiple failures the substation still retains a high degree of availability. 5, ADDITIONAL FEATURES The features that can now be more easily and cheaply implemented due to the ability of bay level devices communicating directly to each other include © Interlocking between the control operations of the primary devices * Blocking and protection functions before manual operations and automatic blocking between relays ‘+ Automatic change over of power supply * Onvoff control of ripple control system and condensator batteries ‘+ Load shedding automation (automatic control of power loss situations) * Control of parallel transformers ‘Improvements to earth fault protection (feeder protections can notice an earth fault in the neighbouring feeder lines, this knowledge can then be used to activate back- up protection) * Automatic supervision of the pick-up of directional earth-fault relays Supervision of the direction of the supply current + Breaker-failure protection * Checking of measurement values through summing current in outgoing feeders and the sum of the energy measurement * Automatic switching to isolate busbar faults enabling maximum availability 714 LL as.5.1 Disturbance Recorders Disturbance recorders have traditionally been add-on black box affairs where all the required information needed to be independently wired back to the recorder. The implementation of information sharing between devices via communication systems and the increase in processing power available in modem F.T-E. allows for the disturbance recording to be performed within the existing feeder terminal. 5.2. Remote Interrogation The high transmission rates now available are only fully utilised under fault conditions. Under normal stable operation the system is capable of using this spare capacity to provide other features from remote locations including: * Protection settings retrieval * Protection settings configuration including multiple banks Fault disturbance information Plant performance information These may be accessed either from the substation man machine interface, through the existing gateway to the main control centre, through a wide area network or via an external modem link. 6. INSTALLATION COSTS Single Feeder Terminal Equipment (FTE) can be mounted directly on the instrument panel of the metal clad switchgear of GIS panel (or on a small wall mounted panel for open terminal equipment). Signals from outdoor equipment can be gathered by means of simpler /O devices mounted in the circuit breaker marshalling kiosk, mesh comer kiosk, transformer terminal pillar etc, Each of these I/O devices are connected to a substation data concentrator by a discrete 2 fibre optic cable. The cost of these glass fibre-optic cables is considerably less than a single small capacity copper multicore cable. Where distances are shorter and can be contained within panels, plastic fibre-optic cables can be used which are less expensive and easier to terminate A typical 132/11kV substation with DAR, auto-reclose, sequence switching and disturbance recording using conventional arrangements can result in the multicore/multipair cabling including terminal boxes, glanding and making off to be as high as £97k. Using digital Feeder terminal equipment these cabling costs fall considerably and a gain. on a like for like basis of £64k can be realised. |The requirement for 132kv and 11kV remote control/indication panels is removed and may realise savings of £24k and £22k respectively. Should a separate disturbance recorder be specified, the savings on a 36 channel recorder, in a wall mounted panel and cabled to the 11kV switchboard with all associated equipment could save a further £30k. The resulting savings of around £140k is more than enough to cover the cost of the substation control system which acts as the data-concentrator, local man machine interface and gateway through to top level network control systems using existing protocols, Further such an arrangement has the additional benefits of local/remote selection facilities, all associated circuit alarmvtrip annunciation available in coherent language and an easy and flexible platform on which to perform changes without extensive wiring modifications 7, LIFE TIME COSTS In addition to the installation costs further savings can be gained over the system life time, This allows benefits to be seen even when the new systems are retrofitted to existing substations as part of a refurbishment where there may already be a large amount of cabling, i The Feeder Terminal Equipment employ comprehensive self checking facilities where | the integrity of the system is tested to ensure correct operation will result. | The benefits are realised in two distinct forms. As the system performs the self checks it detects any failures that may have occurred. In such an event the system will automatically report the failures through the alarm system, Maintenance engineers can then be scheduled to visit site and correct the fault. This has the benefit of reducing the level of routine maintenance by engineers as the system is performing the task automatically. This combined with the improvements in reliability of equipment such as. GIS, can result in maintenance visits being both shortened and made less frequent, i | The second benefit is that as the system detects faults as they occur, the system may not be left in a compromised situation for long period of times. Traditional problems | with protection devices would normally only be detected through the routine 1 ‘maintenance or through the failure to operate correctly under a fault condition. The later of these two can lead to network difficulties, prolonged consumer disconnection and possibly greater damage to plant which the schemes were protecting 8, FUTURE PROOFING It is important for any potential user of this new technology that the items purchased are future proofed to prevent the problems of future mismatch or obsolescence. The use of a complete substation communication system employing LON-Works can communicate with all Feeder Terminal Equipment, voltage control relays, frequency relays, distance relays, overall transformer protection relays, generator protection relays, unit protection relays etc. LON-Works is a standard now adopted by over 1800 users with over 1.5 million devices in use. 716 : i |8.1 New Technology The new generation of protection relays use digital signal processing which enable them to do the mathematical processing required for the latest sensors such as Rogowski coils giving the benefits of greater dynamic range, distortion free secondary signals, immunity to the DC component and high linearity, The relays functions are thus improved in terms of accuracy, stability and selectivity. The improved dynamic range also enables a more accurate protection algorithm which could only be achieved expensively with traditional sensors. Condition monitoring of circuit breakers is also improved as traditional Cts can be easily saturated, The high peaks of interrupted currents that stress the circuit breaker the most can now be measured properly. Due to the low cost of the implementation of the LON-Works technology many new devices have built in communications to enable them to be readily integrated into the system. These include: ‘+ New sensor devices (e.g. optical current sensors) «Devices for substation access control ‘© Devices to control close circuit television © Transducers «Different types of VO devices (e.g. digital input/output devices, mA or PT100 input devices) «Analogue or digital alarm annunciators 9, IMMEDIATE BENEFITS With the introduction of feeder terminal equipment a number of benefits are immediately realised. All individual parts of the protection, measuring, indication, alarm, communication, control etc. are monitored on a regular basis and any deviations from the norm are immediately reported to the centre thus eliminating potential failures leading to mal- operation of plant and protection. ‘The FTE will monitor and record all circuit breaker closing and opening times with summed kA or I t values, real time synchronised. The FTE allows at least 2 groups of protection settings that can be remotely selectable enabling alternative network discrimination and/or a lighter setting for network sectionalisation post fault which reduces system disturbance to the connected customers. The FTE will record all system disturbances triggered by a pre-set threshold, real time synchronisedMore specialised protection relays operating on the same hardware platform are able to communicate all their specialist features bi-directionally with the centre enabling such information as the distance to fault to be passed on to the field engineer, within seconds of the occurrence from the distance relays, for example The increase in information available to the control staff and the speed at which this information can be provided allows for a quicker manual response to network faults and an associated increase in supply availability. The systems within a substation can also be configured to automatically provide switching functions which enables the minimum of disruption when isolating a fault. 10. CONCLUSIONS The use of modem technology will enable the reducti “de-skilling’ of the operational staff, reduction- if not complete abandonment - of separate routine protection maintenance, the primary plant maintenance can be scheduled when required by the diagnostic information gathered. Better system management can be achieved with the real-time data gathered and future network reinforcement can be accurately planned and timed from the network information gathered 718 in staffing levels at the centre, AFigure 1 Functional Diagram of a Substation ; Operator Fault’ Telecontr, Station _Busbar Station Level ‘MMI Analysis Gateway(s) Functions Protection. Data Exchange HV Bay/Circuit _Control__—_—~Protection Control Protection ” |, | | | MV Switchgear Fe ree fe re at: ree level Figure 2 Typical System Arc ein a 132/11 kV Substation ve oc = Det Communications fae | a LONDus Il Fibre Optic Communications 1.2MBitsis Star Coupler LoNbus LoNbus &@ & 8. 8 & & 8 & ae