IEC 61850 is the new international standard for communication in substations. It enables integration of all protection, control, measurement and monitoring functions within a substation, and additionally provides the means for high-speed substation protection applications, interlocking and intertripping. It combines the convenience of Ethernet with the performance and security which is essential in substations today.

As a result of 10 years of active participation of several AREVA experts in IEC and UCA working groups developing this new substation communication technology,and following successful interoperability demonstrations at CIGRE 2004 and many other events, AREVA T&D Automation has been busy adapting its Protection (MiCOM P range) and Control (MiCOM C range) devices to support this new international standard.

The protection relays integrate with the PACiS substation control systems over the IEC 61850 8-1 Substation Bus and at the same time can interface with our own or other vendors Merging Units over the IEC 61850 9-2 Process Bus, thus completing AREVA T&D Automation's offer of a full IEC 61850 solution for your substation.

AREVA provides solutions that allow the migration from conventional or different legacy substation automation systems to IEC 61850 based SAS. Relays which have already been delivered with UCA2 on Ethernet can be easily upgraded to IEC 61850, while relays that support other communication protocols can be integrated using 'proxy' servers.