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Virtualization of a sensor node to enable the simulation of IEC 61850-based sampled value messages

Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree
Master of Technology: Electrical Engineering
in the Faculty of Engineering
at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology
2014 / The IEC 61850 standard, “Communication networks and systems in substations” was
promulgated to accommodate the need for a common communication platform within
substations for devices from different vendors. The IEC 61850 standard proposes a
substation automation architecture that is Ethernet-based, with a “station-bus” for
protection devices within the substation and a “process bus” where raw data from the
voltage and current transformers are published onto the data network using a device
known as a Merging Unit.
To date, most of the standardization efforts were focused at the station bus level
where event-triggered messages are exchanged between the substation automation
devices, commonly referred to as Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs). These
messages are known as Generic Object Oriented Substation Event messages.
Equipment from vendors to accommodate the “process bus” paradigm, however is
still limited at present.
The Centre for Substation Automation and Energy Management Systems was
established within the Electrical Engineering Department at the Cape Peninsula
University of Technology with one of its objectives being the development of
equipment either for simulation or real-time purposes in compliance with the IEC
61850 standard. In order to fulfil this long-term objective of the Centre, an in-depth
understanding of the IEC 61850 standard is required.
This document details the efforts at acquiring the requisite knowledge base in support
of the educational objectives of the Centre and the research project implements a
simulation of a merging unit which is compliant with the functional behavior as
stipulated by the standard. This limited functional implementation (i.e. non-real-time)
of the merging unit, is achieved through the development of a virtualized data
acquisition node capable of synthetic generation of waveforms, encoding of the data
and publishing the data in a format compliant with the IEC 61850-9-2 sampled value
message structure.
This functional behavior of the virtual sensor node which was implemented has been
validated against the behavior of a commercial device and the sampled value
message structure is validated against the standard. The temporal behavior of the
proposed device is commented upon. This research project forms the basis for future
real-time implementation of a merging unit.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:cput/oai:localhost:20.500.11838/1179
Date January 2014
CreatorsLuwaca, Emmanuel
PublisherCape Peninsula University of Technology
Source SetsSouth African National ETD Portal
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis

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