Voltex Systems & Integration, as a sister company to Voltex Power Engineers, provide consulting and commissioning services solely for Substation Automation Systems.
Process Automation is a different discipline, and if these engineers are engaged without extensive experience and understanding of power systems operation and protection, the risks can quickly become catastrophic.
A critical component of effective SAS is the network design and architecture selection. VSI favour HSR – PRP, (High-availability Seamless Redundancy – Parallel Redundancy Protocol), which has proven to be reliable and generally prevalent among leading manufacturers.
VLANs (Virtual LANs) are usually preferred on multiple substations systems to mitigate potential latency issues, with communication paths limited to those necessary for operation. VLANs require “smart” switches which can be programmed to forward messages to the correct addresses.
IEC 61850 is intended to provide interoperability between a variety of devices (IEC 61850-7-2). However, the Conformance Statements required by Annex A do not make ALL communication features mandatory – manufacturers can choose which optional features they adopt. Designers must be very familiar with these conformance statements (often not supplied with a standard user manual) before commencing any network philosophy or IED programming, especially in networks combining
