A review of international industry practices for specification of functional requirements of protection, automation and control

Abstract

Many technologies are available today for implementation of power system Protection, Automation, and Control (PAC) systems. Most of them use IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) standards like IEC 61850, IEC 61499, IEC 61131 and IEC 61970. These standards utilize many of the specialized software modelling languages, mostly based in XML (eXtensible Markup Language) or UML (Unified Modeling Language). As a response to the lack of uniformity in specifying the functional requirements of the PAC system, CIGRE Task Force TF B5.02 was commissioned to conduct a detailed survey about international industry user experience in this aspect. A total of 135 experts in 97 companies from 42 countries participated in this survey and shared their experiences. Their answers reveal the advantages, disadvantages and the challenges faced, by the industry, with the existing methods and formats and preferences of newer options proposed by task force members. This paper is a summary of the key findings of the survey conducted by CIGRE Task Force TF B5.02. The results from this Task Force paved the way for the commissioning of a new CIGRE working group (B5.64) for proposing new methods for specification of functional requirements of Protection, Automation and Control.