First 400 kV fully digital substation in India
The implementation of the commercial digital substation based on IEC 61850 was completed in April 2019 and the site commissioning activities are under progress.
image source: POWERGRIDS
India, Punjab, Malerkotla: The implementation of the first commercial 400 kV fully digital substation based on IEC 61850 was completed in April 2019 and the site commissioning activities are under progress.
Over the last decade the Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd. (POWERGRID), the central transmission utility for India, deployed IEC 61850-based grid substation automation in more than 100 substations across the country.
The company commissioned a pilot project in 2014 using process bus technology at its 400 / 220 kV Bhiwadi substation in the state of Haryana. The substation is equipped with three 315 MVA, 400 / 220 kV transformers, 10 400 kV feeders, and eight 220 kV feeders.
POWERGRID used the pilot project at the Bhiwadi substation as a test bed for conducting performance evaluation studies on the network and devices, including examining the conformance of these devices to the IEC 61850 standard.
POWERGRID leveraged the results of the performance evaluation studies to support India’s first full-scale commercial implementation of a digital substation at the 400 kV level. This project entailed retrofitting the control and protection system of an existing 400 / 220 kV substation located in Malerkotla in the state of Punjab. The substation was equipped to meet the IEC 61850 standard using a process bus-based substation automation system.
The complete substation upgrade required updating the protection and control systems, including the bus bar protection system, for the entire substation. IEC 61850 process bus technology had to be installed on all feeders in the air-insulated switchyard as follows: 400 kV Malerkotla-Dadri transmission line, 400 kV Malerkotla-Patiala transmission line, 400 kV Malerkotla-Ludhiana transmission line, three 400 / 220 kV transformers, and a 50 MVAR bus reactor.
POWERGRID incorporated advanced networking techniques, such as virtual local area networks and multicast filtering, for efficient network traffic management. As time synchronisation was extremely stringent, the devices used were subject to rigorous validation testing.
Another fully digitalised substation, the 220 kV Greenfield Chandigarh substation, is currently under construction. The FAT is complete and commissioning tests are currently underway.
Source: T&D World