Research On The Retrofit Scenarios From Traditional Substations To Smart Substations

This paper generally introduces the development and the structure of the smart substation, and analyses the problem in the retrofit project of upgrading traditional substations to smart substations. It also proposes several possible scenarios with a typical example of FanChang substation retrofit project. Finally the paper analyses the advantages as well as disadvantages of the proposed scenarios.Based on IEC61850, the smart substation has become the future trend for its excellent performance on communication, information exchange and costs saving. Equipments used in smart substations are greatly different from those used in traditional ones. So if we want to upgrade traditional substations to smart ones, we should replace all the primary equipments, the secondary equipments and the communication equipments. So we must find a way to solve this problem. We need a solution which could make us not only have the advantages of the smart substation but also reduce the waste of the project.The technique of smart substation has greatly improved over the last 20 years and several smart substations have been built in China. However there has been a long lack of research concerning the upgrade from traditional substations to smart substations. Previous solutions were to simply build new smart substations on the site of traditional ones, which were costly and not suitable for most traditional substations that couldn't be switched off while upgrading. Hence a stage processing method for most retrofit projects is needed in most retrofit projects.