A Novel SCL Configuration Method for Modeling Microgrids with IEC 61850

IEC 61850 is poised to be the communication standard of the future power networks. Due to its historical evolution, it focuses on substation automation and modeling its entities. There have been recent extensions in the standard's modeling to include other grid equipment as well as distributed generators. However, the configuration of the communication network, as it is outlined in IEC 61850-6, is very substation-focused and cannot be used for microgrids. The microgrid network is a wide-area network with multiple distributed generations (DGs) cannot be configured in a manner similar to a substation communication network detailed in IEC 61850-6. This is because the enhanced system configuration description language (SCL) files cannot be exchanged with each DG while this is not an issue for substation modeling. Also, this would result in multiple copies of enhanced SCL files and is not feasible to implement. Thus, there is a need to develop a process for configuring IEC 61850 based communication networks at the microgrid level. This paper proposes a central configurator and a step-by-step configuration procedure for modeling microgrids according to IEC 61850. Such a configurator assists in connecting IEDs in different locations and updates the system with the new deployment. The process is shown with a centralized microgrid protection scheme by employing a microgrid-level system configurator.