In addition to the 300 product and solution demonstrations over the three days of the event, a dedicated panel discussion with utility representatives and a case-study presentation exploring utility cooperation drew visitors' attention to smart grid solutions from ABB and Ventyx, an ABB company.
This summary focuses on presenting the customer experience of ABB's offering at European Utility Week, in particular on smart power distribution solutions, together with grid and network automation solutions, as experienced by one of the representatives visiting the stand from the Finnish utility, Caruna.
Benefitting from the full potential of the latest Relion® REF615 feeder relay
Caruna is the largest electricity distribution company in Finland with 640 000 residential and industrial customers. In fact, Caruna's network is so extensive it would reach twice around the globe.
Mr. Oleg Gulich, Smart Grid Project Manager at Caruna, confirmed that the utility is using the IEC 61850 standard for substation automation communication, but at the same time they are open to other data transmission protocols such as ABB SPA or IEC 60870-5-103 too.
Mr. Gulich was familiar with the IEC 61850-compliant Relion® protection and control relays for medium voltage applications. "We use REF615 feeder relays for substation-level protection and remote control purposes. Generally speaking, we use all basic protection functions", he said. For a more precise detection of earth faults in compensated neutral networks, Caruna is also exploring the latest functionality enhancements in REF615, for example admittance-based earth-fault protection.
Fault location is high on the agenda also for application in meshed networks. "Our protection functions and relay selectivity is based on time delays. This is quite reliable and has proven to work well in the current network topology. However, the topology is changing at a rapid pace, and eventually we will have to deal with larger short-circuit fault currents and high-ohmic earth faults. This is a good time for us to consider whether we need to start utilizing more advanced protection functions", Mr. Gulich added.
Smart grid projects with ABB
Caruna has several ongoing substation automation projects together with ABB. One of the most significant is the "Pusula" pilot where the utility has deployed the latest smart grid solutions from ABB for a more efficient fault location and isolation. The setup is based on the Zone concept, designed to minimize the number of customers affected by network faults. This is achieved by increasing the number of protection zones.
"We have retrofitted two of our primary substations and are now using ABB's Grid Automation Controller COM600 together with an added-value software package still being developed by ABB that creates a fault package based on the information collected from the REF615 feeder relays and fault indicators. The software also calculates the distance to a fault and sends the information along with the recommended actions to the network control center. This enables faster fault isolation and reduces both the outage duration and the number of customers affected by a disturbance", Mr. Gulich said.
Emphasizing the importance of software in smart grid projects, Mr. Gulich also wanted to point out that Caruna is constantly looking for new functionalities and calculation modules for the SCADA/DMS and NIS*/GIS** systems, to enable extended data analysis and facilitate smarter planning of investment projects.
*NIS Network Information System
**GIS Geographical Information System
ABB's smart grid innovations at the podium
The fact that ABB can provide complete distribution systems was generally appreciated by the visitors acquainting themselves with the offering on display, designed to provide a hands-on experience. The smart grid offering was also acknowledged by the jury of the Product Innovation Awards - a debuting competition supporting the theme for this year's event, "innovation". Selected ABB and Ventyx solutions were nominated amongst over 350 solutions providers.
"We are not only showing the physical infrastructure where ABB is traditionally strong, but also the integration with network control systems. This is also reflected in the two ABB nominees for the Product Innovation Awards, the UniSec secondary switchgear - representing the field - and the Outage Life cycle Management (OLM) solution from Ventyx - representing the control system", Mr. Jochen Kreusel, Head of ABB's Smart Grids Industry Sector Initiative, said when exploring ABB's offering to support utilities in their transition to smarter grids at EUW14.
The Ventyx OLM solution was eventually selected as the winner of the "Smart Metering, ICT & Grid Security" award as well as the overall winner of the Product Innovation Awards, receiving special credit for its originality, sustainability, efficiency as well as practicality.
As of next year, European Utility Week will tour the European cities. Meet ABB next time in Vienna, Austria, on November 3-5!
