Review of Bus Differential Protection Using IEC 61850

The electrical power system is susceptible to several faults, which can cause the system to malfunction. Among these, the ones that occur in the busbars of substations stand out. The main bus of a substation can concentrate a large amount of power and many derivations to service electrical loads, making it an element of high importance for the reliability of the system. Although the buses have a low incidence of faults, they are considered critical elements of the electrical power system, as their operating output can cause a large number of forced outages. This situation makes the protection of this component of paramount importance. There are currently two widely used bus differential protection techniques: high-impedance and low-impedance bus differential protection. The second technique is more commonly used due to the possibility of sharing current transformers (CTs). However, the high cost and greater requirements for maintenance makes the differential protection of busbars in distribution or sub-transmission substations unfeasible. With the advent and implementation of the IEC 61850 standard, modern protection systems based on this standard offer significant advantages, such as lower expenses with installation, wiring, commissioning and maintenance; adaptable bus configuration; use of different CT ratios; considerably minimized susceptibility to CT saturation; lower risks of open secondary CT circuits and viability of implantation in distribution substations. The objective of this review is to present an overview of the works found in the literature on substation busbar differential protection, considering classical methods and those based on the IEC 61850 standard.