A Master Thesis in Collaboration with Sweco - Quality aspects of using IEC61850 process bus in Hydro Power Stations

In Hydro Power Stations (HPS) there exist circuits of measurements from voltage and current transformers with long distance of cables. At least it’s a fact for under-ground HPSs where you often have the high voltage substation with the step-up transformer at ground level connected to the generator with long distance medium voltage circuits. These measurements circuits are mainly used for differential pro-tection and as reference values for controlling purposes of the turbine and the gen-erator.

Replacing cables with process bus technique offers a number of benefits, for example personal safety, cost reductions, maintenance, flexibility etc. What is still up for question, though, is what other aspects that must be taken into consideration when designing process bus architectures.

This master thesis focuses on investigating what architectural principles exist for implementing process bus technique and how system reliability and performance is affected. Other more general benefits are also interesting to highlight in the thesis.

Important steps include:
i) Modeling the current “as-is” architecture
ii) Defining components and design principles for process bus architec-ture
iii) Modeling suitable “to-be” architectures
iv) Analyzing reliability and performance for “as-is” and “to-be” scenarios and also present some general befits

To fulfill these steps a comprehensive treatment of available literature, as well as real observations at hydro power plant stations and elicitation of expert knowledge, is necessary.