New strategies for substation control, protection and access to information

In view of the pressure on cost reduction and productivity improvement, which is caused by deregulation and unbundling vertical structured utilities into smaller dedicated entities for generation, transmission and distribution, the greatest change is expected to happen in the substation information, control and protection technologies. The trend moves towards "intelligent substations" which will comprise all electronic components and the virtual elimination of copper wiring. The paper describes a system concept for integrated control, protection, condition monitoring, condition supervision, asset management and outage management system, which assures higher availability of plants and enhancement of the overall utility performance.