The protection relay supports communication protocols including IEC 61850, Modbus® over TCP and serial RS-485. Operational information and controls are available through these protocols. However, some communication functionality, for example, horizontal communication between the protection relays, is only enabled by the IEC 61850 communication protocol.
The IEC 61850 communication implementation supports all monitoring and control functions. Additionally, parameter settings can be accessed using the IEC 61850 protocol. Disturbance recordings are available to any Ethernet-based application in the IEC 60255-24 standard COMTRADE file format. The protection relay can send and receive binary signals from other devices (so-called horizontal communication) using the IEC 61850-8-1 GOOSE profile. Furthermore, the protection relay supports sending and receiving of analog values using GOOSE messaging. The protection relay meets the GOOSE performance requirements for tripping applications in distribution substations, as defined by the IEC 61850 standard.
The protection relay can support three simultaneous clients. If PCM600 reserves one client connection, only two client connections are left, for example, for IEC 61850 and Modbus.