Customer: Grid Smart Software Limited
Market: Power & Energy
Location: UK

Grid Smart Software Limited is a company focused on control and protection software solutions for the substation market. IEC 61850 is a standard for multi-vendor, real-time, integrated control of substations, and it allows substation operators to design systems using the best products from any manufacturer worldwide. Every intelligent device in the substation will produce data that needs to be collected, stored and in the event of a problem, analyzed. Grid Smart Software’s 61850IMU product enables utilities to do just that.

Advantech has supplied Grid Smart Software with the UNO-4683, the latest 61850-3-certified substation computer. The UNO-4683 comes with Intel’s fastest chip for fanless, embedded applications – the dual-core, four-thread, Intel® Core™ i7. The UNO-4683 has a modular design, allowing buyers to configure the unit with the appropriate fiber-optic, Ethernet or serial communications, as well as hard disk drives for data storage.

The UNO-4683 is certified for use in substations; meaning that it can operate at extended operating temperatures, has higher resistance to vibration and shock than would be found in a normal industrial environment, and is protected against the electrical interference that is typically found in substations.

As a computing platform, the UNO is designed to work with almost any kind of software – enabling a multi-vendor environment where application experts like Grid Smart Software can focus on the application, and rely on industrial PC experts like Advantech to provide the hardware platform. IEC 61850 has opened the market for multi-vendor solutions in the Substation world.

When Grid Smart Software first tested their application, 61850IMU, they used an embedded PC with Intel’s Atom™ processor, such as Advantech’s UNO-4673A. When they measured its performance, they found that it could handle 100 Generic Object-Orientated Substation Event (GOOSE) packets per second. These GOOSE packets had to be processed and stored, preferably on a hard disk drive that could handle at least a month’s data – up to 40 GB.

GOOSE packets of data are produced by intelligent devices every time they detect that something has happened that needs to be actioned by other intelligent devices – for example, if an over-current or under-frequency state is detected that could lead to a circuit-breaker opening a circuit, this information needs to be transmitted to other devices that may need to respond by themselves opening or closing switches. All these GOOSE packets need to be monitored and stored. The 61850IMU also collects substation data mapped as MMS.

System Diagram:

System Description:
For some customers, however, the performance of a PC with an Intel Atom processor may not be enough. A large substation can have many intelligent devices, each producing many GOOSE packets, and these need to be handled in real-time.

The Intel® Atom™ processor in the UNO-4673A is dual-core, but designed for low-power consumption it has a clock speed of 1.6 GHz. This also makes it easier to manage thermal issues like its maximum operating temperature.

Advantech’s UNO-4683 has now been launched, making the Intel® Core™ i7 available for the first time for high-performance applications in a substation-hardened form-factor. With a significant increase in clock speed to 2.5 GHz, and all of Intel’s latest technology to speed up processing as well as much more cache, it should perform faster, but just how much faster?

Grid Smart Software put the UNO-4683 to the test, and the results were pleasantly surprising – with a loan unit from Advantech, the GOOSE packets were processed at a speed of 400 packets per second.

Grid Smart Software’s 61850IMU is available in both Linux and Virtual versions. UNO-4683 has already been tested for virtual applications like VMware’s ESXi virtual operating system, and of course, Advantech has a long history of supporting Microsoft and Linux operating systems, as well as real-time variants.

Benchmarking Results:

Conclusion:
Advantech’s rapid support enabled Grid Smart Software to complete the testing before exhibiting at the bi-annual Cigré exhibition in Paris at the end of August 2012. Colin McKie, Business Development Manager was delighted with the result “The UNO-4683 gives our clients a new option – its much faster performance really opens up the design options and ensures that we will never run out of power. The UNO’s dual hard disk drive architecture allows us to store all the system files on a single drive, and keep all of the substation data on the second one.” Advantech and Grid Smart Software will both be exhibiting at the IntelliSub Europe conference and exhibition in October 2012. Intelligent Substations are brilliant examples of multi-vendor architectures using the best software and hardware on the market.