IEC 61850 (legacy)

The IEC 61850 I/O interface allows connecting to various IEDs through publishing and subscribing of GOOSE and Sampled Values messages. Using a standard network interface card, this protocol can be easily and rapidly integrated into any simulation model.

With the proper user configuration, a driver is initialized on the target simulator at the start of the simulation and begins publishing and subscribing to other IEDs. The driver makes use of asynchronous threads on dedicated cores in order to achieve high performance.

Deprecation details

This interface is in the process of being phased out as it is replaced by a redesigned solution, with added support for the Manufacturing Message Specification (MMS) feature. The new interface's documentation can be found here.
In order to facilitate the migration from the legacy solution to the new one, a converter tool was made. It permits porting the configuration of the interface along with its created connections. The converter can be reached by right-clicking on the legacy interface instance and selecting Convert to V2.., as seen in the image below:

The documentation for the converter tool can be found here.

NOTE: Support for the legacy interface will be dropped in version 2024.1. Please ensure to have done the migration to the new interface by that point, either by using the converter tool described above or by recreating the configuration manually.

NOTE: As of HYPERSIM 2022.1, this interface can no longer be used to create new configurations. However, all previously made configurations will continue to be supported until version 2024.1.

Introduction

IEC 61850 is a standard for the design of electrical substation automation. It is part of the International Electrotechnical Commission's (IEC) Technical Committee 57 reference architecture for electric power systems. The abstract data models defined in IEC 61850 can be mapped to a number of protocols. Current supported mappings in the standard are to GOOSE (Generic Object Oriented Substation Event) and SV (Sampled Values). These protocols can run over substation LANs using high-speed Ethernet switches to obtain even the most restrictive response times of less than 3 ms for protective relaying. The UCA international users group has published the “Implementation guideline for digital interface to instrument transformers using IEC 61850-9-2“. This implementation guideline is an agreement of the vendors participating in the UCA users group about how the first implementations of digital interfaces to instrument transformers will be. Based on these documents, HYPERSIM implements the exchange of GOOSE messages (chapter IEC 61850-8-1) and Sampled Values (document IEC 61850-9-2LE), as well as Samples Values based on a Substation Configuration Language (SCL) file (document IEC 61869-9).

IEC 61850-8-1 GOOSE

The following information applies for both types of GOOSE message functionalities: Publishing and Subscribing. Generic Object Oriented Substation Events (GOOSE) is a control model mechanism in which any format of data (status, value) is grouped into a data set that must be sent and received within a time period of 3 milliseconds for the most restrictive protection applications. GOOSE data is directly embedded into Ethernet data packets and works on publisher-subscriber mechanism on multicast or broadcast MAC addresses. The same GOOSE message is retransmitted with varying and increasing re-transmission intervals. A new event occurring within any GOOSE data set element will result in the existing GOOSE retransmission message being stopped. A state number (see 'stnum' value in console) within the GOOSE protocol identifies whether a GOOSE message is a new message or a retransmitted message. Please refer to the chapter IEC 61850-8-1 for further information about the support of GOOSE messages in the IEC 61850 standard. The content of any GOOSE message must be described in a SCL (Substation Configuration Language) file. Usually SCL, ICD or CID files are provided with every IEC 61850 IED, or they can be created using any IED configuration tool. If the IED ICD file is not available, the SCL example file (icd61850.icd) that comes with the example model can be used and modified. For more information about SCL format, please refer to the chapter IEC 61850-6 of the IEC 61850 standard.

IEC 61850-9-2LE Sampled Values

To facilitate easy synchronization and efficient combination in substations at least for limited signal channels, the so-called logical merging unit (MU) was introduced. It combines related inputs like the currents and voltages from three phases, and additionally also the zero currents and voltages in one data set for transmission with the SV service to all subscribing IEDs. IEC 61850-9-2 leaves both the combination of signal channels to data sets and the sampling rate as free engineering parameters. To facilitate the application of such samples and reduce acceptance problems, the user convention IEC 61850-9-2LE has recommended values for these parameters at least for the most common applications i.e. using 80 samples per cycle for protection and 256 samples per cycle for power quality.

IEC 61869-9 Sampled Values

This standard extends the use of Sampled Values to customizable data sets and sampling rate. The Sampled Values configuration is described in a SCL file harmonizing the data set description among GOOSE and Sampled Values.

Communications protocols can be configured in the I/O Interface Configuration tool that can be opened from HYPERSIM Ribbon Options.

For more information on the general use of the I/O Interface Configuration, see also I/O Interfaces.