Mission Brief

The Nerves Behind the Steel

Plainly: a substation reports thousands of signals to the control room — every breaker position, every current and voltage, every alarm — and receives controls back (open, close, raise, lower). Your job is to prove that each of those signals travels correctly, end to end, from the field device to the operator's screen, and that the fast trip messages between relays (IEC 61850 GOOSE) arrive in time. You do it one signal at a time: FORCE the signal at its source, then CONFIRM it reads correctly at the master. A single point wired to the wrong address, or scaled wrong, or a trip message that arrives late, stays invisible until the day it matters — so every point is checked by hand.

• For each STATUS: force it at source, confirm the master shows the right point & state
• For each MEASURAND: inject a value, confirm the master reads it scaled correctly
• For each CONTROL: select-before-operate, confirm it operates the right point
• Time each GOOSE trip and check it meets its class (Type 1A ≤ 3 ms)
• Confirm GOOSE identity vs the SCD, and the clock is synchronised for event ordering