IEC 61850 Substation Viewer Benjamin Whiting, Gabe Jensen, David Lystad, Nathan Champion

Sponsored / Mentored By: Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories

Zachary Wormgoor, Levi Herpel, Apurva Bhende, and Mark Bosold

Background Electricity is utilized all around the world to power our businesses,

homes, and assorted technology. You may have seen large electrical

substations near your neighborhood. These substations route and

transform power to be sent to your homes all over the city. At some point

they needed to be designed and engineered in order to function safely

and efficiently.

One early form of substation design is a one-line

diagram that simulates the current flow through the substation and its

equipment starting at the top and flowing to the bottom of the diagram.

There are few diagramming tools and fewer yet that adequately provide

the functionality engineers need at this stage of design. This paved the

way for SEL to sponsor the Substation Viewer project.

Acknowledgements A special thanks to:

Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories

● Mark Bosold

● Zachary Wormgoor, Levi Herpel, Apurva Bhende

Washington State University

● Sepideh Mazrouee

Glossary ● SEL - Acronym for Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories.

● SCL – Substation Configuration Language, which is an xml-formatted file containing substation related data.

● XAML – Language utilized to format and design WPF Applications

● C# - Programming language developed by Microsoft, pairs with XAML.

● MVVM – Acronym for Model-View-View Model, a design pattern for decoupling.

● Architect – Preexisting software toolkit used when handling SCLs.

● WPF – Windows Presentation Foundation

The Project The Substation Viewer project proposed a software application that must

decipher xml formatted SCL files containing substation designs and create an

editable one line diagram. The software must allow for the creation of new

diagrams and the system must be able to create new SCL files for any new or

modified diagram. Intended end users are SEL's engineers and Architect

users.

Implementation The produced software is a (WPF) project implementing a MVVM

design pattern. (WPF) utilizes XAML form designs that consist of a C#

code behind. This allowed us to create a software system structured to

hold complex container structures. Drag and drop functionality, as

well as manipulating and arranging the equipment as displayed graphics

were possible as a direct result of this structure. The final product is also

capable of loading, modifying, creating, and saving to a SCL file. Adding

equipment is possible through an equipment library panel on the right side of

the interface. Further editing is possible by right clicking on equipment in the

diagram.

One Line Diagram

The Software

Criteria • The software shall display SCL substations as a one line diagram.

• Busbars, individual equipment, bays and voltage levels shall be visibly distinguishable.

• Editing features such as moving, deleting, adding, and re-sizing all components must be possible.

• Ability to create new diagrams and save preexisting diagrams into an SCL file.

SCL File

Related work Quality CAD and design software are hard to come by. Many

engineers have to use software designed for other purposes. Even fewer

options are available specifically to create one-line diagrams. With the ability

to actively modify the SCL while adhering to the 61850 standard, the

substation viewer has little competition.

Washington State University

Use Case Diagram

One line diagram showing two bays connected by a busbar.