The Power systems Relaying Committee (PSRC) was organized over 75 years ago.  At that time relays were dedicated devices that performed single function protection functions. For example, a CO relay is a time overcurrent relay and nothing else. As the evolution progressed, SCADA systems came into being. The first SCADA RTU’s gathered contact status from equipment in substations and reported this status back to a master unit in the control center. Eventually, SCADA systems gathered analog information from transducers and reported this back to the control center. Our industry has evolved significantly in the 75 years since PSRC was formed. The multifunction microprocessor relay has changed the industry. Many of the functions done by the RTU are now being accomplished by the microprocessor relay. It’s the industry norm now for SCADA systems to address the microprocessor relay directly to obtain analog currents and voltages, status of equipment, and issue trip and close commands through the relays to circuit breakers. Now we are at the beginning of applying 61850 networks in substations where relays are playing an integral role in both protection and control.  The separation of protection and control as we have known it in the past is being blurred to the extent that we needed to rethink the scope of the Power Systems Relaying Committee to conform with what’s happening in the industry today and what’s envisioned for the future.

As the industry has been undergoing a change, so has the PSRC. For the last several years the Power system Relaying Committee H Communications Subcommittee has been collaborating with the C0 Subcommittee of the Substations Technical Committee. This to the extent that many of the working groups were joint between the two subcommittees. Going forward it was only natural that parts of these two groups C0 and H, be joined together into one subcommittee in the PSRC.

Concurrent to this reorganization, the PES Technical Council advisors suggested a need for all power systems communications to reside under one umbrella group, and that a group to address power system cybersecurity be formed. As a result a new technical committee is being formed call Power System Communications and Cybersecurity Technical Committee. Details on this technical committee is the subject of another report. Working groups in the PSRC H subcommittee, and Substations C0 subcommittee that deal with communications methods, and protocols will migrate to the new technical committee. Working groups from Substations C0 are also migrating to the PSRCC. With the close association of the two Technical Committees, joint meetings are being planned for the foreseeable future.

With this background, the PSRC has been tweaked with a new name: Power System Relaying and Control Committee (PSRCC), and has a new scope:

Treatment of all matters in which the dominant factors are the principles, application, design, construction, testing, and operation of power system protection and control. Protection and control systems include one or more of the following functions: sensing, data acquisition and processing, fault detection, manual or automatic control, and auxiliary operation.

Included are:

  • The devices providing these functions such as protective relaying, regulating, monitoring, synchronism-check, synchronizing, and reclosing relays; transducers; and Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs).
  • The functions employed in the generation, transmission, distribution, and utilization of electrical energy, and their effects on system operation.
  • The environmental phenomena that can adversely affect them.
  • The communication, cybersecurity, time synchronization, and related requirements necessary to support protection and control systems, such as the identification and declaration of object modeling, message sizes, latencies, and jitter for satisfying technical and business requirements.

The scope includes liaison and cooperation with other technical committees, societies, groups and associations concerned with various aspects of items herein.

Stay tuned for further updates on PSRCC.