Case Study

Centralized Remote Fault and Event collection and configuring system for IEDs / Relays and Centralized Automatic Fault Analysis system

Scale: More than 200 Substations & More than 5000 IEDs. Largest asset monitoring project in the country’s transmission network

Business Case:

The customer is one of the largest transmission utility companies in the world, with a near 100,000km transmission network and over 200 EHV / HVDC substations. They planned to set up remote access and automatic fault analysis system from each of its substations across an area of 2.5Mn sq. km. The main functionality desired was the automatic remote collection of the Disturbance Recording (DR) files, and Event Logs (EL) from the various devices in the substations, and download to a central National Transmission Management Center, through multiple Regional Asset Management Centers spread across the country. The utility wanted to remotely view, configure devices, collect disturbance, and event data, making it possible for the substations to be unmanned and operated / maintained remotely. 

Solution Components:

• Gathering Fault Files: - SYNC Protocol Gateways / Data Concentrators were used to retrieve the disturbance data from all the vendor IEDs using the vendor protocol drivers available inside SYNC Gateways. This retrieved fault file would be in vendor fault file format.
• Conversion to COMTRADE Format: - Inbuilt mechanism within SYNC Gateways was used to convert the vendor-dependent fault file format to a common COMTRADE format with IEEE file name.
• SFTP Push to central System:- These files were pushed to multiple locations at the center using SecureFTP client protocol & enabling fault analysis system using these fault files.
• Complete Redundancy:- Hot-Standby configuration and High-end synchronization mechanisms available in SYNC Protocol Gateways ensured that the system would not fail because of the single point failures. PRP protocol was used for seamless network redundancy.
• Remote Configuration Management:- Kalkitech Power System Enterprise Suite (PSES) was used to collect the fault records and managed the centralized configuration of all the IEDs launching a specific version of the configuration tool based on the electrical hierarchy configured. The multiple versions of the settings were managed in the central database & comparisons could be performed at any time.
• Manual DR trigger from Remote CC:- Option to issue triggers via different control centers (ICCP) for the collection of disturbance records manually (CC to SS Gateways via IEC104 protocol) were also given.
• Security Requirements:- The complete solution met the requirements of  NERC CIP & IEEE1686 standards including RBAC, secure access, etc.

Key Benefits:

• The customer was enabled to get all the Fault files at the center within 5 minutes of its creation and could do automatic analysis and take actions accordingly.
• Enabled utility to do the complete setting management of the IEDs at a central location or regional centers.
• Complete HSB and network redundancy ensured a single point of failure did not affect the system.

Webinar Video Recording Link:

Webinar on the complete Solution