Virtual Isolation & Testing with
IEC 61850

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Previously held Thursday, January 25, 2024 at 10am ET

In a traditional substation with copper wires, testing is straightforward. You can isolate the section to test attempting to avoid effecting the entire system, hook up the test equipment and physically perform a manual test. However, this involves a tremendous amount of manual effort, intervention & modification of the entire system which is ultimately inefficient and creates a high risk of multiple safety issues.

SOLUTION:

With the introduction of IEC 61850 into a substation, there are many features defined by the standard to eliminate the manual effort with Virtual Isolation.  This will increase efficiency & accuracy of testing while greatly reducing safety risks.  The transition from physical isolation to virtual isolation requires new tools to visualize what signals are being processed, injected by test equipment, or blocked.  Automated test sequences performed by these tools can be validated on a simulated substation and prove that no unexpected results occur.  Portions of the simulated substation can be replaced by critical protection equipment to verify they will respond correctly to signals generated by both the test tool and other IEDs in the simulated substation.

What you'll learn: 

• How to increase confidence in Virtual Isolation testing before entering the substation
• IEC 61850 features for managing virtual isolation
  • Different testing modes of an IEC 61850 Logical Node
  • How to manage reception of simulated GOOSE streams
  • Understanding the impact of blocked behavior
• How LGOS is used to monitor the status of GOOSE subscriptions
• Real life examples of how to perform virtual isolation testing using 61850 Test Suite Pro on a simulated substation in Distributed Test Manager (DTM)
  • Monitor real and simulated signal flow
  • Set test mode in IEDs
  • Configure IEDs to receive a simulated GOOSE stream
  • Publish simulated GOOSE Streams
  • Identify what signals are being processed, injected by test equipment, or blocked
  • Automate test setup and validation

Who should attend this course: 

• Protection & Control Engineers/ Managers
• Maintenance personnel
• System Integrators
• Software engineers/managers
• Substation Field Technicians
• Anyone that is open to adopting a standardized process to save time & money

Instructors:


Christoph Brunner
President
it4Power

Christoph Brunner has graduated as electrical engineer at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in 1983. He is Utility Industry professional with over 30 years of industry experience with both knowledge across several areas within the Utility Industry and of technologies from the Automation Industry. He is a well-known expert on IEC 61850 as he has been involved in the development of the standard since the beginning. He is president of it4power in Switzerland, a consulting company to the power industry. As such, he has been consultant in many projects for substation automation and projects involving IEC 61850. He has worked as a project manager at ABB Switzerland Ltd in the business area Power Technology Products in Zurich / Switzerland where he was responsible for the process close communication architecture of the substation automation system. He is convenor of the working group (WG) 10 of the IEC TC57 and member of WG 17, 18 and 19 of IEC TC57. He is IEEE Fellow, member of IEEE-PES and IEEE-SA. He is active in several working groups of the IEEE-PSRC (Power Engineering Society – Relay Committee) and member of the PSRC main committee and the subcommittee H. He is guest professor at Shangdong University of technology and international advisor to the board of the UCA international users group.

Jackson Moore
Applications Engineer
Triangle MicroWorks, Inc.

Jackson received B.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering from North Carolina State University and has a background in power systems engineering. Prior to joining Triangle Microworks, Jackson spent five years as a Microgrid Systems Engineer, where he designed and developed load management control systems for multi-source microgrids ranging from 1MW to 30MW. In his current role of Application Engineer, Jackson serves as a bridge between our customers and our development team, seeking to understand and solve the unique and complex challenges our clients face.