Structured approach to maintenance and modification of a railway traction IEC 61850 substation automation system

Abstract

Network Rail is currently electrifying one of the world's oldest main line railways, the Great Western main line between London and Cardiff. The traction system substations will incorporate full IEC 61850 functionality including the Rationalised Autotransformer Scheme: the world's first wide‐area traction protection scheme operating using GOOSE messaging. The design and construction elements of a wide‐area IEC 61850 system have been considerable. However, attention now focuses on future management of the IEC 61850 assets including the Substation Configuration Language files associated with the scheme. This study considers the IEC 61850 scheme of Network Rail from an asset owner's perspective. It sets out a structure for system modification and renewal which can be implemented by the in‐house substation maintenance organisation for a complex IEC 61850 architecture. The system modelling and configuration control systems are described, along with a detailed examination of the management processes associated with future changes to IEDs and wide‐area tripping logic.