An Overview of the Implementation Issues of IEC 61850 Based Substation Automation System (SAS)

IEC 61850 standard has gained a tremendous popularity in substation automation after its emergence.

Many research papers have been published highlighting the different features and benefits of

the IEC 61850. The standard offers interoperability, easy configuration, less cost, and simple architecture.

However, in order to avail these features and advantages, there are many challenges during practical

implementation which has been discussed in this paper. Previous papers generally discuss about one

or two issues, i.e., particularly implementation and security issues, but this paper comprehensively

discuss all failures and technical challenges faced by IEC 61850 based substation automation

system (SAS). The paper presents a detailed overview of different kinds of issues, i.e., practical implementation

issues, structural issues in hierarchical layers, security issues, interoperability and interchangeability issues,

communication challenges, planning, reliability, synchronization, availability, training and functional issues,

manpower skills, and other issues, etc. The paper discusses issues and challenges which need to be taken

into account and should be resolved before the implementation of the standard, i.e., the criticality of IEC61850

based communications in terms of data transfer, reliability, availability and efficiency. In order to get successful

implementation, and complete advantage of the standard, it is very necessary to take into account the existing

issues and address them before implementing the standard in a utility. The paper also discusses about the future

of IEC 61850 standard, and shows that DNP 3 protocol is still very popular among utilities,

especially in the North America. The paper also discusses its possible integration with Internet of Things (IoT).

Finally, the paper presents a case study of substation with respect to end-to-end delay of time critical

Sampled Values (SV) messages in an Ethernet and wireless environment. This study will help the user

in understanding the substation primary plants, i.e., current/ voltage transformers (CT’s/VT’s), circuit breakers,

etc., for substation automation, control and protection.

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