Journal of Power and Energy Engineering, 2014, 2, 239-243
Published Online April 2014 in SciRes. http://www.scirp.org/journal/jpee
http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jpee.2014.24034
How to cite this paper: Liang, W., Wang, N., Wang, Z., Liu, T. And Mu, Y.F. (2014) Research on Source Maintenance Key
Technology of the Smart Substation. Journal of Power and Energy Engineering, 2, 239-243.
http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jpee.2014.24034
Research on Source Maintenance Key
Technology of the Smart Substation
Wei Liang1, Nan Wang2, Zheng Wang1, Tao Liu1, Yunfei Mu3
1State Grid Tianjin Electric Power Research Institute, Tianjin, China
2State Grid Tianjin Economic Research Institute, Tianjin, China
3Key Laboratory of Smart Grid of Ministry of Education, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China
Email: losowei@163. com
Received November 2013
Abstract
The source maintenance technology of the smart substation offers the base for the models, data
and graphs sharing between the substation and the dispatch center. This paper researches on the
conversion technology between SCD model in IEC 61850 Ed. 2 and the CIM model in IEC 61970.
The substation provides SVG and SCD documents to the dispatch center, which includes primary
equipment information and the network topology. The dispatch center’s automation system com-
pletes the conversion between the two models. This paper researches on the smart remote tech-
nology, which uses IEC 61850 as communication protocol. It can filter and restructure communi-
cation data based on the needs of different dispatch center. At the same time, it can provide quali-
ty control of communication link, to ensure that the important data be sent in real time.
Keywords
IEC 61850; IEC 61970; Model Conversion; SCD; CIM; Smart Remote; Source Maintenance
1. Introduction
Source maintenance technology is an important part of smart substation advanced applications. It requests that
the substation provides a variety of self-described configuration parameters as the data source of the dispatch
center. We can use the unified configuration tool to generate the standard configuration files including substa-
tion wiring diagrams, network topology and other parameters and data model when we are maintaining in the
substation. The dispatch centers don’t have to rebuild the data model; they can receive the standard configura-
tion files automatically, and import them into their own system database. The sharing of graphs, data and models
are implemented by model information mapping technique [1].
Source Maintenance Technology can provide forceful guarantee for data consistency at dispatch centers, en-
sure the data model consistency between the substation terminal side and dispatch centers, eliminate the poten-
tial risks caused by the data model inconsistencies, and improve the system reliability. Smart substation source
maintenance technology includes unified modeling of full station data which meets IEC61850 standard; model
mapping between the SCD files based on IEC61850 standard and the CIM files based on IEC61970 standard [2];
smart remote technology which uses IEC61850 standard protocol as the communication protocol between smart
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substation and dispatch center [3]. This paper studies the above key technologies. Specific program is shown in
Figure 1.
2. Model Mapping between IEC61850 and IEC61970
Currently, IEC61850 Ed.2 standard has been upgraded to the electric power enterprise automation system com-
munication architecture standard, which supports the coordination of the IEC61970 CIM in the dispatch centers,
and realizes the functions that master dispatch terminal can access to field device information seamlessly [4].
Both the SCD model and the CIM model use the object-oriented technology to build the data model, and the
XML as their own description language, so the SCD model and CIM model have many similarities. By estab-
lishing the mapping relationship between the two models, we can convert the SCD model to CIM model, which
mainly includes device containers, conductive device, topological relations, and measurement model [5], as
shown in Table 1.
The conductive devices in SCD model are relatively general, only including the attributes of devices. On the
other side, the devices in CIM/E model are defined as classified. As a result, the conductive devices in SCD
model and the specific devices class can map by the attributes [6]. As shown in Table 2, some of the devices
type have no mapping devices in CIM/E, for example, the lightning arrester and the cathead. For those devices,
we don’t establish mapping relationship.
Figure 1. Source maintenance framework map.
Table 1. Mapping of SCD and CIM Model.
Mapping Type SCD Model CIM Model
device containers
Substation Sub Control Area
Voltage Level Base Voltage
Bay AC Line Segment, Energy Consumer, Busbar Section
conductive device Conducting Equipment
Power-Transformer
Breaker
Disconnecter
AC Line Segment
topological relations Terminal I_node
Connectivity Node J_node
measurement model L node
Discrete
Analog
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Table 2. Conductive devices mapping relationship.
Conductive devices type CIM Model
CBR Breaker
DIS Disconnecter
LIN AC Line Segment
DC Line Segment
… …
3. Intelligent Remote Technology Meeting the IEC Protocol
Currently, the communication between the smart substation and the dispatch center still use traditional
IEC60870-5-101 or 104 protocols. The system need to transform the IEC61850 to the 101/104 protocol so that
the communication complete successfully [7]. Because the traditional protocol does not support the ob-
ject-oriented modeling methods, the system must transform the IEC61850 object to certain information points,
leading to extremely complex configuration tasks of forwarding information, which greatly increases the work-
load of the system and results in many errors, for example, unable to achieve seamless interconnection, as
shown in Figur e 2.
To solve the problems, it is necessary to develop a new generation of smart remote device, which use
IEC61850 as communication protocol. It can make sure the consistent between the communication model and
the substation data model, avoid series of project implementation and maintenance issues, such as model con-
version, secondary configuration and transmission test. The smart remote device solves the following two tech-
nical difficulties, as shown in Figure 3.
Firstly, for the dispatch system, the IEC61850 describes the substation data model over detailed. The SCD file
contains full data of various voltage levels. But the dispatch center of different levels concerns various contents.
For example, the junior dispatch center cares about 110 kV voltage level, while the senior dispatch center cares
about 220 kV or 500 kV voltage level. It is obviously unrealistic if the substations upload the whole SCD file to
every different level of dispatch center, and ask them to pick out the data they need from the massive data.
Secondly, different from 101/104 protocol, the iec61850 protocol don’t control the priority of data, which
means that the data isn’t divided into junior and senior level data, and rapid transmission of important data can-
not be guaranteed. For example, when a large number of telemetry data is sent to the dispatch center cyclically,
meanwhile, the switcher operates and the information must be sent to the dispatch center. It is likely the data
can’t be delivered on dispatch center immediately because the communication bandwidth is limited. Therefore,
in order to achieve the communication sharing based on IEC61850, the remote device must be smarter. It is not
only the communication gateway device forwarding message transparently, but also the server filtering and re-
structuring data. It gathers, filters and groups the IED’s data, to form a new dataset such as 500 kV dataset, 220
kV dataset, etc. and send to the dispatch centers, depending on the information content required for the different
dispatch center. Considering the problem that the iec61850 don’t have priority control, it is proposed to revise
the current mechanisms of MMS services, to interrupt the data being transmitted and insert the higher- priority
data in this paper. Additionally, we may reinforce communication channel’s quality controlling or use another
channel to transmit the important data such as the switcher operation information, to ensure that the important
data be sent in real time.
4. Conclusions
Currently, source maintenance functions still remain in the preliminary stage, and there is no practical engineer-
ing solution. This paper researched on the source maintenance key technology of the smart substation, proposed
practical techniques method. The substation provides SVG and SCD documents to the dispatch center, which
includes Primary equipment information and the network topology. The dispatch center’s automation system
completes the conversion between the two models. The dispatch center and substation communicate through the
smart remote device, which based on IEC61850 protocol. The dispatch center’s automatic system does not need
to model the data, and the data modeling work is done at the substation side. By doing this, the workload of the
dispatch center is reduced substantially. Furthermore, the need of manual configuration of substation sending
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Figure 2. IEC61850 to 101/104.
Figure 3. New approach to exchange
real-time data.
data and dispatch center receiving data does not exist. The technical staff doesn’t need to experiment a lot of test
to verify the correctness of the configuration and the systems reliability is improved.
With the continuous development of network communication technology, the Source maintenance functions
will be more extensive and practical, the data sharing technology and application integration will be further de-
veloped, which is useful for the advanced function’s progress, such as real-time automatic control of the grid,
smart regulation, on-line analysis and decision, etc.
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