ELECTRICAL UTILITY SECONDARY SUBSTATION AUTOMATION

ELECTRICAL UTILITY SECONDARY SUBSTATION AUTOMATION

The Electrical utility industry is going through a difficult evolution battling issues like balancing high energy demand/consumption with low energy generation while reducing their carbon footprint. This has led to modernization of the grid and further proliferation of smart devices like synchrophasors, sensors, smart meters, and actuators that provide real-time assessment of powersystem health and control of utility assets like transformers and capacitor banks. Of the numerous activities that initiate a smart grid, automating primary (HV/MV) and secondary (MV/LV) distribution substations is perhaps the the most challenging activity, with distribution substations distributed across a vast geography. In order to introduce optimized automation algorithms into these distribution substations, utilities use wireless technologies like WirelessHART, LTE, ZigBee, etc. Most utilities have automated their primary distribution substations by using WirelessHART as a wireless sensor network (WSN) technology between the sensors/actuators and the automation controller. Even though the technologies used in the primary substation can be adopted with the activities of the secondary distribution substation, the secondary substations proximity to residential homes and distributed energy resources (DER) necessitates dening a secondary substation node (SSN) that supports orchestration of IEC 61850-based devices as well as devices supporting ZigBee SEP. This paper highlights some of the considerations for a SSN as dened by EU smart energy projects OpenNode and INTEGRIS, and introduces Aricents approach to defining SSN through our solution accelerators.

Introduction
Many countries across the world are modernizing their power grids into smart grids in order to increase reliability and energy efficiency, enable transition to renewable sources of energy, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and build a sustainable economy. Enabling smart grids entails on adding and integrating many varieties of digital computing and communication technologies and services with the power-delivery infrastructure. Bidirectional flows of energy and two-way communication and control capabilities enable an array of new functionalities and applications that go well beyond smart meters for homes and businesses. Smart grids can provide predictive power information (e.g., meter reading data, charges, and power usage recommendations) to both utilities and consumers. It can also diagnose power disturbances and outages to avoid equipment failure and accidents in generation, transmission, and distribution within the utility network. Various standards bodies and national regulatory organizations are working to define the interoperability of devices used in smart grids. NIST is one such prominent standards body that has defined detailed conceptual reference architecture for smart-grid information networks. NISTs concept model provides a high-level, overarching perspective of major relationships across different domains of power-grid systems like generation, transmission, distribution, and energy sources, as well as users with the capability to make decisions and exchange information with other users. This concept model denes information ow between different domains and users within the smart grid.

Electrical Utility Secondary Substation Automation

Distribution Substations and Automation

Substations in the power grid system are described by their voltage class and application within a power system. A distribution substation transfers power from the transmission system to the distribution system of an area. A typical distribution substation contains a switch and low-voltage transformer. Many large cities feature complicated distribution substations containing both high-voltage switching and low-voltage switching and backup systems. More typical distribution substations have a switch, one transformer, and few low-voltage facilities. Distribution automation (DA) optimizes a utilitys operations and directly improves the reliability of its distribution power system. The success or failure of an automation program hinges on proper selection of equipment and communications to seamlessly integrate data into the utility control room. Functions necessary for substation automation and application are protection, control, measurement, and monitoring. Typical distribution automation solutions consist of three main components: an - IED (including reclosers, capacitor controls, switch controls, faulted circuit indicators, voltage regulators,

and breakers), a network that connect all the devices (via wired Ethernet or wireless connections), and software that receives input from, and manages, the eld devices. Fast and efficient intercommunication between these devices is achieved through substation automation system. Advanced distribution optimization algorithms utilize exchange of information between the devices and the device that coordinates all substation devices. An example of this is the acquiring of empty or load voltage values in order to assess whether they are within the limits and to acquire medium-voltage distribution line states. Additional information about the substation, such as door position, transformer temperature, switch-gear position, and voltage readings, is also used when making real-time adjustments for changing loads, generation, and failure conditions within the distribution system. Newer microprocessor-based relays and other intelligent devices provide unprecedented exibility and rich functionality which, in turn, provide low-cost monitoring analysis and diagnosis of electrical faults in the power network. Many newer IEDs provide optional network interfaces such as distributed network protocol (DNP) 3.0 or IEC 61850 over transmission control protocol (TCP)/Internet protocol (IP)/Ethernet.

Operations Distributed Storage N.O. Switch

Markets

Distributed Generation Transmission Sectionalizer Cap Bank

Substation Reclosers and Relays

ElxtNet

CL200 2474 JNV JO4

Control Measure Protect

Record Optimize Customer

External Communication Flows

Internal Communication Flows

Electrical Flows

Domain

Overview of Distribution Domain (Reference: NIST Smart Grid Framework)

Electrical Utility Secondary Substation Automation

Until now, many of the sensors used in automation activities were connected with wires, severely limiting their size and scope of coverage. Wires and the required conduits are expensive to install and become fixed installations that are difficult to change. As a result, many installations find it necessary to limit the number of sensors simply to control costs, which restricts the exibility to adjust these networks to meet new uses. When not required for critical infrastructure, wired solutions are often summarily dismissed as being a luxury. But with the growing trend of minimizing technical and commercial losses by moving from distribution automation to smart distribution that supports self-healing (i.e., isolation of faults for faster service restoration) and autonomous restoration, distributed energy resource deployment, bi-directional ow of energy and information, enhanced supply security, and power quality, there is a greater focus on automating the controller activities in a distribution substation through either wired or wireless communication technologies. The use of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) for automation and monitoring has several benets over wired systems, including reduced cost, ease of reconfiguration, and deployment convenience. There have been signicant developments recently in terms of WSN standardization, with the HART Communication Foundation and International Society of Automation (ISA) being particularly inuential in the eld of wireless industrial automation systems and ZigBee Alliance in developing ZigBee wireless standards. However, WSNs also bring cyber security and privacy challenges to smart grids. For example, a number of security, privacy, and reliability issues can appear during electric power delivery. Competitors can compromise selected nodes and thus fail the critical mission of supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. Any of these can cripple a grid, resulting in millions of homes and business establishments losing electrical power. Security of WSNs is therefore a critical concern when designing networks for usage within a substation or a mesh network across substations.

substation takes higher priority compared to the secondary substation automation. However, with increased focus on power quality in the distribution network and with secondary substation providing connection points for a wide variety of loads as well as a growing number of unpredictable renewable power sources, there is an increased focus on secondary substation automation. The introduction of distributed generation in distribution networks requires protection and control systems that can reliably locate and isolate faults. With rising demand for electricity, decentralized power production (rooftop solar panels and household windmills), and new loads (heat pumps and EVs), utilities, today more than ever, are looking for ways to enable a smarter, secure grid that delivers uninterrupted power supply to consumers at reasonable prices. To achieve this, utilities face various challenges to keep their substations up and running. Problems like power outages, costly unplanned maintenance, and rising operational costs often get in their way and then cascade into a whole series of problems. Normally, electricity utilities with SCADA systems have extensive control over transmission-level equipment, and increasing control over distribution-level equipment via distribution automation. However, they are often unable to control smaller entities such as distributed energy resources (DERs), buildings, or homes. A micro grid is a cluster of various DERs like solar, wind, fuel cell, micro-turbine, diesel generator, battery systems, Electrical Vehicles (EV), etc. With the number of DERs bound to rise quickly, the ability to monitor these new power inputs into the grid, balancing grid demand with generation, and coordinating generation from these micro grids as more generators are connected to the distribution grid all become increasingly critical. Seamless two-way communication plays an important role in the operational and control functions of a micro grid, such as optimal control, protection, monitoring, metering, self-healing, etc. Because these DERs may have a grid interconnection to feed excess power, it is important to orchestrate their activities with those of the main grid for an optimal utilization of the micro grid.

Secondary Distribution Substations and Automation

Based on the voltage handled, a distribution substation is divided into primary and secondary substations. A secondary unit substation is typically MV/LV (with input of 1 kV up to 35 kV and output of 1 kV). Principal areas of application include use in industrial plants, electric power generating stations, and commercial buildings. With higher voltages involved in the hierarchy of the network, automation of the primary distribution

Secondary substation automation is used to increase efficiency of grids. Recently, OpenNode, funded through European Communitys Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013), has begun addressing challenges in increasing efficiency of the distribution grid through creation of a secondary substation node (SSN) as an essential component of the smart distribution grid. This node addresses the functionality required by the grid to cope with massively distributed embedded systems in the distribution grid. The SSN allows aggregation of status monitoring and metering management, as well as running third-party applications (e.g., advanced grid control algorithms

Electrical Utility Secondary Substation Automation

Final Customer Secondary Substation

Utility Control Centre Middleware Enterprise Service Bus Device Management Events Processing Software Provisioning Other Companies Retailers Traders Power Supplies Meter Operators Others Utility Systems Technical Systems Billing Systems Workforce Management Critical Information Business Intelligence SCADA GIA

SM

SM

Measure Management SSN IEDS Sensors Actuators Transformer Network Supervision and Monitoring Administration System Distributed Process Management Grid Topology Events Measures Virtual SSN

SM

SM

AMM Millions Thousands OpenNode overall framework (Source: OpenNode EU project) One

or critical value monitoring like monitoring busbar voltage and split current across multiple transformers by activating circuit breakers) that can be dynamically installed during live operation to enable the controlled shift of grid intelligence from centralized systems in the utility control center to lower echelons of the grid hierarchy. The SSN uses an IEC 61850-based data model that represents all data points in its canonical tree structure. Thus, all logical operations in SSN happen solely on the data model, completely abstracting underlying automation hardware and higher-tier system architectures. This architecture also proposes to use IEC 60870-5-104 as standard for exchanging information for electrical device monitoring and control as the protocol supports real-time and synchronous data transfer. The OpenNode requirements specification captures SSN functional requirements that cover areas related to smart-meter management and data acquisition, measurement of MV/LV side of transformer, clock synchronization, fault detection and isolation, alarm reporting, line restoration (open and close orders to the MV switches in order to restore the power after an interruption), auto test, power supply backup management, fraud detection, autonomous load shedding, manage energy storage devices, and integration with IEC 61850 procedures and data model. Another EU project, INTEGRIS (INTelligent Electrical Grid Sensor communications), proposes the development of a novel and flexible ICT infrastructure based on a hybrid Power Line Communication (PLC) wireless integrated communications system able to completely and efficiently fulll the predicted

communications requirements of Smart Electricity Networks in the future. This includes all-encompassing applications such as monitoring, operations, customer integration, voltage control, quality of service control, control of DERS, and asset management and can enable a variety of improved power system operations, some of which are to be implemented in eld trials that must prove the validity of the developed ICT infrastructure.

HV-MV Substation

MV-LV Substation

MV-LV Substation

Sensor

RFID Reader RFID Tag

Source: INTEGRIS

PLC CPE PLC HE PLC Repeater

OpenNode and INTEGRIS serve as excellent references for developing the SSN that will enable automation activities in a secondary substation utilizing different WSNs (wireless sensor networks) technologies as well as the DA protocols like IEC 61850 and DNP3.

Electrical Utility Secondary Substation Automation

Role of ZigBee in Secondary Substation Automation

As discussed earlier, use of WSNs based on IEEE 802.15.4 (WirelessHART, ISA 100.11a or ZigBee) are intended for monitoring and control using analog and digital input/output. They and they meet the requirements of less power, and also transmit data a lower rate for automation and monitoring of the secondary substation. Since WSN-based automation is not new and there is a large installed base of HART/WirelessHART and ISA-based automation networks, it is quite natural to select these technologies for secondary substation automation. At the same time, ZigBee has evolved as into being WSNs cheapest and easiest solution for controlling and automating small network devices. Research has shown no significant adverse impact on the performance of ZigBee by the electromagnetic environment of the substation and therefore can be used for automation purposes inside a secondary substation. All ZigBee networks must have a coordinator to set up the network, be aware of all its constituent nodes, handle and store information, act as a repository for security keys, and manage the information transmitted and received within the network. Core specication denes ZigBees smart, cost-effective and energy-efficient mesh network as a self-conguring and selfhealing system of redundant, low-cost, very low-power nodes. In mesh networks, each wireless node communicates with the one adjacent to it. In the event of node failure, information gets automatically rerouted to allow devices to continue communicating. Unlike ZigBee-enabled devices, all WirelessHART devices must have routing capabilities (i.e., no reduced functionality). WirelessHart networks are self-organizing, with all devices being treated equally in terms of networking capability, installation, formation, and expansion. This functionality may be necessary for primary substations, but is overkill for secondary substations. To maintain a focus on carbon reduction and effective utilization of energy resources, it is important to balance energy generation and demand through well-defined demand response (DR) systems. Generation can be plagued by factors like uctuation (over/under) as well as duration of such fluctuation. These factors have to be matched with demand-side parameter (e.g., under-generation to be managed through DER, over-generation to be handled through storage, and time variability to be handled through faster DER/short-term usage. To do this, it is essential to get the data of the demand side and act on it. ZigBee enables capture of the information either through request/response method or last-gasp methods. More energy sources connected to secondary distribution networks play an important role in balancing peaks of supply and demand as well as contributing to supply quality (controlling

voltage, power factors, and harmonics). This, however, requires connectivity to distribution management systems with the intelligence needed to calculate the active power (P) and/or reactive power (Q) requirements according for the actual situation and the available P and/or Q in energy storage systems. As well as implementing proper protection, control, and monitoring, renewable sources are important. In order to address this need, ZigBee SEP 2.0 has included a distributed energy resources function set that provides an interface to manage DER. Client devices of this function set include intelligent solar inverters, fuel cells, EV, generation units, and battery storage systems. Server devices of this function set include energy management systems that can be part of a secondary substation node. Servers expose energy transfer control events called DER Controls (DERC) to client devices e.g., active power derating setpoint indicating a percentage reduction to be applied to a DER output. As SEP 2.0 resource representations are built to be compatible with the IEC Common Information Model (CIM), there is a greater harmonization among substation automation standard IEC 61850 and ZigBee.

Secondary Substation Automation and Aricent

Aricents SSN Framework is designed to help vendors accelerate time to market with rapid prototyping and commercialization of applications necessary for the secondary substation automation. This framework consists of Aricent Data Concentrator Application Framework (DCAF) and Aricent Energy Manager Framework (EMF). Aricent DCAF provides a Web services-based interface layer that exposes most common functions related to smart-meter management (e.g., meter read (ondemand plus periodic), remote connect/disconnect, alarm management, fraud detection, and meter administration (including meter registration, remote software updates, clock synchronization, etc.)). The framework has been designed in a platform and protocolagnostic manner and can be used on both DLMS/COSEM and other protocols like ANSI C12. Aricent also brings in a DLMS/COSEM stack on SSN node to connect with smart meters over PRIME/G3 PLC. Aricent EMF is an energy management framework that provides an application environment to develop distribution automation algorithms. As a rst step, Aricent has implemented a demand response (DR) algorithm wherein it handles events from utility demand response application server and converts to multiple ZigBee SEP and HA events. Aricent intends to extend this EMF to include additional algorithms for secondary substation automation as well as to enable DER management.

Electrical Utility Secondary Substation Automation

Conclusion
As utilities create their roadmap to build a resilient smart-grid network, along with providing insight, choice, and control of the energy usage at the demand side, orchestration of the distributed generation with the grid network becomes of utmost importance Behavioral Science in maintaining stability of the utility network. With secondary substation as the perfect position in the grid network to handle distributed grid management functions through a substation node that aggregates different communication technologies to orchestrate activities of the IED in substation, distributed energy resources, and smart meters. Aricent, with its expertise in building smart-home automation frameworks around ZigBee, building data concentrator products in the substation, building routing platforms that can work in harsh environments, and enabling remote controlling of substation networks through backhaul technologies like LTE and Ethernet, will be a trusted partner to ODMs/OEMs and utilities that need to build such solutions.
Source: ZigBee Alliance

Orchestration Distributed Generation, EVs Choice Pricing, Devices, Utility Programs Demand Response, Load Control

Control

Insight Home Energy Reports, Web and Mobile App

Building Energy Science

PRAKASHA M. RAMACHANDRA is one of the system architects in the Aricents smart energy practice. He has more than 17 years of experience in architecting applications & ICT back office platforms in telecommunication, media and smart energy domain. prakasha.ramachandra @aricent.com

B. VENKAT S. R. SWAMY Venkat is one of the system architects in the Aricents M2M and Wireless practice. He has more than 16 years of experience in Product Conceptualization, Architecture and Development in next Generation Convergent and wireless technologies and smart energy domain. b.swamy@aricent.com

REFERENCES (1) U.S. NIST, NIST framework and roadmap for smart grid interoperability standards, release 2. 0, http://www.nist.gov/smartgrid/upload/NIST_Framework_Release_2-0_corr.pdf (2) MSA Ghayum, Comparative Study of Wireless protocols: WiFi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, WirelessHART and ISA SP100, and their Effectiveness in Industrial Automation, University of Texas Master Thesis (3) Q Shan, et al., ZigBee Performance in 400 KV Air Insulated Power Substation , Technological Developments in Education and Automation 2010, pp 15-18 (4) RAP Faria, A Wireless Sensor Network for Electrical Distribution Substations, Master Thesis, 2011 (5) M Alberto, et al., OpenNode: A Smart Secondary Substation Node and its Integration in a Distribution Grid of the Future , Proceedings of the Federated Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems pp. 12771284

Electrical Utility Secondary Substation Automation

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