An Electrical Mine Monitoring System Utilizing the IEC 61850 Standard

Motor control assets are foundational elements in many industrial operations. In the mining industry, these assets primarily consist of motor control centers and drives, which are available with a comprehensive assortment of control and monitoring devices. Various intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) are now used to prevent machine damage and downtime. As motor control devices have advanced in technology, so too have the IEDs that protect them. These advances have resulted in new standards, such as the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 61850, that have embedded intelligence and a standard set of communication schemes by which IEDs can share information in a peer-to-peer or one-to-many fashion. This paper discusses the merits and steps involved with interfacing IEDs to a mining process control network via the use of the IEC 61850 standard.