International standards are being developed to promote rapid configuration and integration into the utility automation system. In order to take advantage of modern technology to provide new benefits to users of substation automation, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) has developed and released a new global standard for substation automation, named IEC 61850. This aim of this paper is to provide a basic technical overview of substation automation and the standard IEC 61850. It will discuss the benefits of each major aspect of this standard and it will describe how these concepts can be used in the development and implementation of tools related to Substation Automation. The application of communication standards and protocols to facilitate data exchange within the substation environment is presented. In addition, the model is implemented using a small distribution system that plans to utilize new communication technology following the IEC 61850 standard. Finally it proposes a set of laboratories to be used as the core of an undergraduate course. Results illustrate that the communication approach as proposed by IEC 61850 fulfills the real-time requirements for control and protection of distribution system

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