Plataforma de testes e virtualização de dispositivos eletrônicos inteligentes baseados na Norma IEC 61850

Abstract

The technological evolution provided the Electrical Power System (EPS), advances in automation over the decades, leaving from purely analog devices until the advent of Intelligent Electronic Devices (IED), which are digital using communication protocols. The wide variety of devices with proprietary communication protocols presented a challenge to the sector by hindering interoperability between devices from different manufacturers, forcing the use of the same manufacturer or gateways protocol converters, which increased the costs of the Automation System (SAS). The creation of the IEC 61850 standard represented a milestone in defining prerequisites, data modeling, services and communication protocols that should be used in control and automation IEDs. However, even with standardization, difficulties of interoperability between devices from different manufacturers still persist. There are several situations in which feasibility tests and compatibility between devices, communication networks, supervisory systems or automation applications are required. A tool is then needed that not only allows to test the IED 61850 IED communication functionality, but also to virtualize any devices through its data model. Virtualization Technology has been gaining ground in the electrical sector, showing the ability to achieve operational efficiency improvements and provide hardware cost savings in SAS environments. This work presents the development of a test platform for communication and interoperability functionalities of IEDs, based on the protocols of the IEC 61850 standard, which aims to perform communication and integration tests for real IEDs, besides virtualizing, from the point of view of the communication capabilities, any IEDs compliant with the standard, through the IED data model. The platform also features a large-scale GOOSE message simulator to perform IED performance tests on communication networks subjected to overload. The platform was developed in Python and C languages, through the libIEC61850 open source computational library, having been tested and validated in the laboratory, based on the testing infrastructure of the UFC - GREI Intelligent Electrical Networks Group, presenting satisfactory results as a tool for IEC 61850 standard communication tests.