IEC 61850 Configuration Solution to Distributed Intelligence in Distribution Grid Automation

To solve the configuration issue when using International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 61850 for distributed intelligence in Distribution Automation Systems (DAS), this paper proposes the configuration solution in terms of semantic models and processing methods. Firstly, the special requirements of the DAS configuration are analyzed, consisting of the system boundary of a configuration project, the topology configuration for distributed applications, and the automatic identification of the Intelligent Electronic Devices (IED). The new models of Process, Line, and other elements are then presented based on the System Configuration Language (SCL) to describe the distribution network topology. The planned contents are allocated into a new format of the Configured IED Description (CID) file to realize the distributed applications. A register service is designed, which fulfills the automatic identification of IEDs when they are remotely placed into a DAS. The service checks the configuration status in real-time and automates the whole configuration engineering process. The case study shows that the proposed solution allows an IED to detect the real-time topology and re-establish the data flow configuration with peer IEDs independently from the master station; thus the distributed applications can be performed more autonomously and efficiently.