This paper describes the design, implementation, and commissioning of a complete protection and control system retrofit project at a large transmission substation. Fort Thompson Substation, located in South Dakota, has two 345/230kV step-down transformers with two 345kV lines and twelve 230kV lines. Western Area Power Administration (Western) undertook a project several years ago to completely renovate all the protection and control systems at this substation. They used the automation practices that Western had developed to reduce costs of new substation construction. While it is easy to cost justify integrating and automating systems when building a new substation, it is traditionally more difficult to justify automation system upgrade schemes when doing a renovation project. However, recent innovations in the integration capabilities of microprocessor-based protective relays, and other substation IEDs, make a complete integration system upgrade, including automation, cost effective compared to selective replacement of individual IEDs, wiring, and testing.
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