South African utility goes live with a world first
June 2000
News
Drivecor
GE Power Management has announced that the world's first fully-functioning, complete substation automation project using the MMS/UCA2 protocol in the city of Nelspruit, South Africa has reached another milestone by recording the first successful UCA trip over a LAN (local area network). GE Power Management's authorised distributor in South Africa, Drivecor, was responsible for supplying, designing, installing and commissioning the protection and control systems. This is the first phase of a long-term distribution network refurbishment initiative that is utilising GE Power Management's successful Universal Relay (UR) family of products.
Norris Woodruff, President of GE Power Management, says the Nelspruit project represents a significant step forward for the utility industry. "It is the first substation automation project to use the most critical feature of the MMS/UCA2 architecture. In a cable fault that developed shortly after commissioning, the UR IEDs sent both trip-initiate and trip-block signals over the station LAN – the system operated exactly as designed. Subsequent analysis of the UR event recorders and oscillography records showed the timing relationships were as intended. Progressive customers like Nelspruit are leading the future direction of substation design."
The substation communications network in Nelspruit uses a fully redundant fibre-optic LAN for substation control and monitoring as well as protection signals such as blocking and tripping. The substations are linked to a central scada system at the network control centre, using MMS/UCA2 to communicate over a fibre-optic based WAN (wide area network). The first phase of the project integrates 24 of GE Power Management's type F60 feeder management relays.
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