Suppliers Use of Substation Specification Description File: The specification of Vattenfall substation automation system in standardized SCL format allows vendors to import topology and object naming directly into their IEC 61850 system integration tools. This is according to the engineering process defined in part 6 of the IEC 61850 series. Figure 10 shows the import of the SSD into the suppliers IEC 61850 system configuration tool. Standardized coordinates and connectivity nodes guarantee a correct layout, even if the orientation of individual objects needs manual clean up. The IEDs are then inserted into the hierarchical structure supplied in the SSD-file. This ensures that no naming errors can occur. IED data attributes can then be linked to the specified apparatuses in the supplier’s system tool.
It was realized during the project that two additional columns with Vattenfall specified function and signal name in the RTU Excel spread sheet was sufficient to link the implementation with the specification. This process is shown in Figure 11. The Helinks tool was therefore modified to import the RTU Excel configuration. The hope and expectation of Vattenfall is that new generations of substation gateways will support a fully IEC 61850 based engineering process.