Motor control assets are foundational elements in many industrial operations. In the mining industry, these assets primarily consist of motor control centers and drives, which are available with a comprehensive assortment of control and monitoring devices. Various intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) are now used to prevent machine damage and downtime. As motor control devices have advanced in technology, so too have the IEDs that protect them. These advances have resulted in new standards, such as IEC 61850, that have embedded intelligence and a standard set of communication schemes by which IEDs can share information in a peer-to-peer or one-to-many fashion. This dissertation investigated the steps involved in interfacing IEDs to a mining process control network via the use of the IEC 61850 standard. As a result of this study, several key technological advancements were made including the development of (i) vendor independent system to communicate with IEDs in a mining environment over IEC 61850, (ii) command and control methods for communication based assisted automation of IEDs for mining firms, (iii) effective solutions to incorporate electrical distribution data in the process control system, (iv) enhanced safety platforms through remote operation of IEDs, (v) standard visualization faceplate graphics for HMI operators with enhanced security, and (vi) new methods for time stamped dataflow to be correctly inserted into a process historian for 'true' Sequence of Events Records. / Ph. D.