Patent ID: 6845301

Claim:
A system for protecting and controlling at least one substation main-circuit component disposed in one of a plurality of bays in an electric power installation, the system comprising: at least one substation controlling-and-monitoring equipment for controlling and monitoring the electric power installation as a whole, including at least one substation main-circuit component, and for communicating with at least one remote control station; a plurality of sensor units for inputting a plurality of analogue AC electric values of a main circuit of the substation main-circuit component, sampling the analogue AC electric values at a predetermined period, converting the sampled analogue AC electric values into sampled digital data, and outputting the sampled digital data corresponding to the analogue AC electric values; a merging unit for inputting the sampled digital data from the sensor units in each bay, merging the sampled digital data, and outputting at least some of the merged sampled digital data to protection-and-controlling means; first serial transmitting medium providing a point-to-point link between the merging unit and the plurality of sensor units; protection-and-controlling means for inputting the merged sampled digital data from the merging unit and for controlling, monitoring, and protecting the substation main-circuit component; at least one component controlling-and-monitoring means for receiving commands from the protection-and-controlling means or the substation controlling-and monitoring equipment, and controlling and monitoring the substation main-circuit component; and communication means for transmitting information between means the protection-and-controlling means and the substation controlling-and-monitoring equipment; parallel transmitting medium connecting at least two of the following: the merging unit; the protection-and-controlling means; component controlling-and-monitoring communication means for sending component controlling-and-monitoring data from the component controlling-and-monitoring means to the protection-and-controlling means, and for sending controlling signals from the protection-and-controlling means to the component controlling-and-monitoring means; and process-bus communication means including second serial transmitting medium for sending the merged sampled digital data from the merging unit to a process bus used for bay-to-bay communication and at least sending the merged sampled digital data from the process bus to the protection-and-controlling means, and/or sending the controlling signals from the protection-and-controlling means to the process bus or sending the controlling signals from the process bus to the component controlling-and-monitoring means via the component controlling-and-monitoring communication means.