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1 INTRODUCTION
Utilities are placing a greater emphasis on real time, enterprise wide information to
secure the right information and the right time to enhance reliability and to better manage
asset management and operations and management. This increases the need for a highly
reliable power system which can be achieved by automating the substation. The substation
automation is a cutting edge technology in the electrical field.
Substation automation can be conventionally segmented into the functions of data
acquisition, control, protection, diagnostics, and monitoring. While there is considerable
overlap between these categories, each has come to represent a set of automation functions
within the power substation. An excellent description of the numerous substation functions
and how they are interrelated has been prepared by the Application of New Technologies
Working Group of the Automatic and Supervisory Systems Subcommittee of the Substation
Committee.
The technology mainly involves the usage of IED(Intelligent Electronic
Devices),control and automation capabilities within a substation. The Control commands are
sent from remote devices to control power systems This mainly relies on substation
integration. This technology replaces manual integration of substation.
Smart substations form the key building block of a smart grid. Smart substation
implies, the creation of highly reliable power system, which rapidly responds to real time
events, with appropriate action to ensure uninterrupted power services to end users.
Substation automation lead to smart substations and Supervisory control and data acquisition
(SCADA) forms the entry towards substation automation. SCADA was introduced in Indian
substations in the year 2000.
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2 EXISTING SUBSTATIONS
Much of the power system equipment in use today is nearing or has passed its
predicted operating life, and we are pushing equipment to increasingly higher levels to meet
demands. Injuries, failed equipment, unscheduled downtime, and loss of production are
concerns that require knowledge of in-service power system apparatus. This is coupled with
the competitiveness of the electrical energy market. The prevention of faults and defects in
substation primary equipment is considered a major differentiating factor in the quality of
power delivered by utilities. The reduction of faults and defects that cause interruptions in the
supply of electrical energy significantly improves service performance rates. The only way to
truly know the actual health, performance, and history of apparatus is to observe them in
service. Condition-based maintenance and replacement strategies are developed with
decision-making information collected from the substation that tells the present state and the
history of the primary equipment. It is essential that we enhance, automate, and reduce the
cost of collecting and acting on this decision-making information. To achieve this objective,
more efficient and intelligent maintenance practices are required and material, human, and
financial resources must be invested correctly. The rules and requirements of the modern
market no longer permit numerous corrective maintenance procedures or periodic
maintenance practices.
In the existing substations there is no information about present state and history
of the primary equipment that are being used in the substation thus making it difficult to track
the errors in substation. In the existing substations there is a need for numerous corrective and
maintenance procedures. The periodic checking of the equipments is also needed to be done.
Thus the implementation of technical monitoring system is unattractive. Condition based
maintenance and replacement strategies are absent.All these features in the existing
substations make it difficult for identification of error and ultimately there is a failure in the
way the substation operates. While there is a increase in the need for complete control, data
acquisition the existing substations doesnt completely satisfy the need. There have been
many advances in substation integration and automation over the past 10 years which makes
us proceed to the next level of intelligent technology i.e.,an automated one.
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3 NEED FOR SUBSTATION AUTOMATION
So how do utilities address this challenge? The main reason for the approach of
automated substation is to address the challengesfaced by the utilities.The control can even be
a remote one depending upon the control systems and programming of the substation.The
main needs of an automated substation requires an increase in reliability of the substation.It
also increases protection of substation.It helps in easy fault identification and analysis. It
must also be easy to maintain such a complicated network.
4 LEVELS OF AUTOMATION
Substation integration and automation can be broken down into five levels. The
lowest level is the power system equipment, such as transformers and circuit breakers. The
middle three levels are IED implementation, IED integration, and substation automation
applications. All electric utilities are implementing IEDs in their substations. The focus today
is on the integration of the IEDs. Once this is done, the focus will shift to what automation
applications should run at the substation level. The highest level is the utility enterprise, and
there are multiple functional data paths from the substation to the utility enterprise.
Open systems - An open system is a computer system that embodies supplier-
independent standards so that software may be applied on many different platforms and can
interoperate with other applications on local and remote systems. An open system is an
evolutionary means for a substation control system that is based on the use of nonproprietary,
standard software and hardware interfaces. Open systems enable future upgrades available
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from multiple suppliers at lower cost to be integrated with relative ease and low risk.
5 AUTOMATION TASKS
Automation task makes the main difference between conventional substations and
the future automated substations. The automated tasks have to be made in a way that it has
accuracy and its very easy in integrating and manipulating data. These data are also expected
to be highly confidential and they must be easily accessible during the time of faults and
transients. These highly important tasks are as follows,
Data Acquisition
Supervision
Control
5.2 SUPERVISION
Computer processes and personnel supervise, or monitor, the conditions and status
of the power system using this acquired data. Operators and engineers monitor the
information remotely on computer displays and graphical wall displays or locally, at the
device, on front-panel displays and laptop computers. The supervision is done with the help
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of the collected data. The collected data is retrieved by means of a HMI (Human Machine
Interface) or HCI(Human Computer Interface).
5.3 CONTROL
Control refers to sending command messages to a device to operate the I&C and
power system devices. Traditional supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA)
systems rely on operators to supervise the system and initiate commands from an operator
console on the master computer. Field personnel can also control devices using front-panel
push buttons or a laptop computer.
The physical structure of the automated substation is built to make it an efiicient and
reliable system.The components included in the substation include the following
The instrument transformers with protective relays are used to sense the power-
system voltage and current. They are physically connected to power-system apparatus and
convert the actual power-system signals. The transducers convert the analog output of an
instrument transformer from one magnitude to another or from one value type to another,
such as from an ac current to dc voltage. Also the input data is taken from the auxiliary
contacts of switch gears and power-system control equipment.
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6.2 REMOTE TERMINAL UNIT
A remote terminal unit is an IED that can be installed in a remote location, and acts
as a termination point for field contacts. A dedicated pair of copper conductors is used to
sense every contact and transducer value. These conductors originate at the power-system
device, are installed in trenches or overhead cable trays, and are then terminated on panels
within the RTU. The RTU can transfer collected data to other devices and receive data and
control commands from other devices. User programmable RTUs are referred to as smart
RTUs.
6.3 METER
A meter is an IED that is used to create accurate measurements of power-system
current, voltage, and power values. Metering values such as demand and peak are saved
within the meter to create historical information about the activity of the power system.
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Fig 6.4.1 Fault Recorder
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6.7 COMMUNICATION DEVICES
A communications processor is a substation controller that incorporates the
functions of many other I&C devices into one IED. It has many communications ports to
support multiple simultaneous communications links. The communications processor
performs data acquisition and control of the other substation IEDs and also concentrates the
data it acquires for transmission to one or many masters inside and outside the substation.
7 SOFTWARE STRUCTURE
The software used in the automation of a substation gives the control for the
hardware structures. These provide the necessary instructions and operations that are to be
followed by the hardware components. Some of the software used are
SCADA
Etap
PLC
HMI
7.1 SCADA
A supervisory control and data acquisition system (SCADA) transmits and receives
logic or data from events of controls, metering, measuring, safety and monitoring of process
devices such as Electrical equipment, Instrumentation devices, telecommunication on
industrial applications. Power system elements ranging from pole-mounted switches to entire
power plants can be controlled remotely over long distance communication links. Remote
switching, telemetering of grids (showing voltage, current, power, direction, consumption
in kWh, etc.), even automatic synchronization is used in some power systems
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8 TECHNICAL ISSUES
Technical issues mainly depend on the coordination between the hardware and
software components.The errors that occur due to the improper integration of the components
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8.4 FIELD DEVICES
Each electronic device (relay, meter, PLC, etc.) has internal memory to store some
or all of the following data: analog values, status changes, sequence of events, and power
quality. These data are typically stored in a FIFO (first in, first out) queue and vary in the
number of events, etc., maintained.
9 COMPARISON
Table 9.1 Comparison between existing substations and automated substation
AUTOMATED SUBSTATION EXISTING SUBSTATION
Full control over the entire substation Control over the substation is limited
The design of new substations has the advantage of starting with a blank sheet
of paper. The new substation will typically have many IEDs for different functions, and the
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majority of operational data for the SCADA system will come from these IEDs. The IEDs
will be integrated with digital two-way communications. Typically, there are no conventional
remote terminal units (RTUs) in new substations. The RTU functionality is addressed using
IEDs,PLCs.
10 ADVANTAGES
The advantages of the automated substation over the existing substation are as
follows. Increased performance and reliability of electrical protection.Advanced disturbance
and event recording capabilities, aiding in detailed electrical fault analysis.Display of real
time substation information in a control centre.Remote switching and advanced supervisory
control.Increased integrity and safety of the electrical power network including advanced
interlocking functions.Advanced automation functions like intelligent load-shedding.
The substation RTU in conjunction with power monitoring equipment on the feeders
monitors, detects, and corrects power-related problems before they occur, providing a greater
level of customer satisfaction. A preventive maintenance algorithm may be integrated into the
system. The resulting ability to schedule maintenance, reduces labour costs, optimizes
equipment use and extends equipment life. Real-time monitoring of power usage throughout
the distribution feeder provides data allowing the end user to track his energy consumption
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patterns, allocate usage and assign accountability to first line supervisors and daily operating
personnel to reduce overall costs.
11 DISADVANTAGES
Investments that are made in the acquisition of substation equipment monitoring
systems add additional costs to maintenance and operation, so the minimization of these costs
is a huge challenge. And the cost of converting the present substation to an automated one
requires a large amount of money.
12 CONCLUSION
Thus these monitoring systems are essential tools that allow distribution
companies to increasingly modernize maintenance techniques and migrate to intelligent and
optimized predictive maintenance. Communications to and among the IEDs allow real-time
data collection, automated substation is capable of supporting all aspects of electric power
protection, automation, control, monitoring, and analysis. Thus the performance of an
automated substation is much better compared to that of the conventional substation.
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REFERENCES
2. http://www.electricenergyonline.com/show_article.php?mag=&article=321
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-system_automation
4. http://electrical-engineering-portal.com/requirements-and-functions-of-substation-
automation
5. http://www.netaworld.org/sites/default/files/public/neta-journals/ExistSubstatInfo-
Pgs51-57.f.pdf
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