As protection and automation systems move to fully digital IEC 61850 process bus solutions, it becomes possible for AC substations to perform system-wide current and voltage injection testing from an RTDS simulation in IEC 61850 digital form, eliminating the analogue amplification and wiring stages.
This may improve commissioning security, as a PAC system is currently tested only at the level of individual devices. Grid operators state that nearly 50% of protection misoperations are due to incorrect settings and configuration mistakes.
The RTDS GTNETx2 card supports two flexible SV streams and four IEDs with GOOSE per interface, while a typical bay requires two SV Light Edition streams (measurement and protection class) and three IEDs with GOOSE/MMS (primary and backup protection, and a bay controller). This means a full substation simulation would require almost one full GTNETx2 card per bay, which can be challenging for real-world deployments with tens of bays. Certain optimizations are possible, such as leveraging the SV flexible stream capabilities and combining multiple real IEDs into a single simulated IED. The recent introduction of GTNETx3 should enhance the experience of working with a fully redundant PRP process bus, which is now a mandatory requirement.
Presented by: Konstantin Goriachevskii, Siemens Energy