Substation Solutions
The next big thing in power industry
With the increase in renewable power production, the behavior of substations is becoming unpredictable and complex. The addition of "non-synchronous production" has adjoined much uncertainty in the system. To avoid system-wide disturbance (such as power swings and blackout) caused by this uncertainty substations need continuous monitoring and diagnostic. M&D not only involves the extra monitoring devices cost but, also the skilled workforce expense. The workforce expense can be cut down by using IDEs. These IDEs not only collect data continuously but also digitalized it before sending it, which is the main purpose of automated substations. In general terms, a fully digitalized substation is one in which as much as possible of the data related to the primary process is digitized immediately, at the point where it is measured and further communicated via ethernet. With IEC-61850 it becomes easier to communicate data within the substation as well as other substations as all devices are IEC-61850 compliant. EPESOL designed substation solution consists of four steps to a fully automated, digitalized substation.
The next stage of automation is substation automation. This solves out many of the challenges of semi-automation. In this stage of automation, the protection and control units are merged at the secondary level and data is transferred to Bay using ethernet. This not only reduces the hardcore copper wire complexity but also enables fast and secure data transfer with the communication protocol of IEC-61850. The merging of the control and protection unit enhanced the control and protection management at the primary level with the “Bay control and protection unit”. This stage of automation also enables the phasor measurements
But there are still challenges involved in substation automation. There is a junk of hardcore wire from primary to secondary which not only increases the hardware cost but also add-on the complexity of system
