February 4, 2015 – Schneider Electric recently announced the completion of the engineering, design, manufacturing and installation of what they claim is Canada’s largest redundant IEC 61850-compliant protection and control system.

Schneider Electric’s Protection Automation and Control Integrated System (PACiS) has been installed in the Riel Terminal Station located near Winnipeg and will help Manitoba Hydro enhance the reliability of the province’s power supply, said the company.

The Manitoba Hydro Riel Terminal Station was finished in October 2014, built to meet IEC 61850 standards. The PACiS deployment installed at the station manages over 120 Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs) across the network.

Riel’s PACiS substation automation system is “fully redundant with two control systems able to operate independently.”

More than 120 intelligent devices on the IEC 61850 network – from multiple vendors – communicate with each other through PACiS, said Schneider. Each device has two communication channels, working in parallel, connected to separate Ethernet rings. Both channels send the same information at the same time, ensuring the loss of any single device on the network will not result in a loss of protection or control functionality for Manitoba Hydro.