Smart grid’s application to projects of Tractebel Engineering France

Abstract:

Nowadays, we hear much about smart grids as a promising idea that will have a direct

impact on our life of tomorrow. Research, articles and standards are also numerous on this

subject. Among them, IEC 61850 is an important standard about communication which could

have a big influence on electrical substations or even power plants in the future. However, the

feasibility of this standard has been little investigated.

This study has been done with Tractebel Engineering France, which is a branch of

GDF Suez. They have good expertise on hydro power plant, but their projects can also cover

electrical substations and electrical transmission lines. Smart grid’s development can have

direct impacts on their activities.

The study presents firstly the different aspects of smart grid, in order to know the logic

of motivations and the interesting points for the company. A certain emphasis has been put on

the electrical gird functioning aspect as well as renewable energies, because they seem to be

especially important for Tractebel.

Secondly, the study is focused on the main aim of this article, the feasibility of IEC

61850 to a substation of Tractebel’s Kaléta project. A presentation and analysis of essential

notions of the standard 61850 has been done in chapter VII. In the following chapters, the

study tries to make a judgment of the feasibility by analyzing the aspects of software,

modeling and practical functioning of the substation.

The study concludes that despite the fact that IEC 61850 seems to be the standard of

the future, it is still premature today for Tractebel to use it in the case of Kaléta. Due to the

independent software tools’ complexity and the lack of interoperability between different

components, the modeling process remains complicated if we don’t want to choose a software

program provided by a specific equipment supplier. Moreover, the functioning of an IEC

61850 substation requires new skills for the staff, which could be another practical problem

for Kaléta.