What Are the Key Benefits of GE Multilin UR & URPlus Protection Relays?

GE Multilin UR & URPlus: Advancing Grid Protection and Automation

The industrial automation landscape demands reliable and intelligent protection systems. GE's Multilin UR and URPlus relay family represents a significant leap forward in safeguarding critical power infrastructure. These devices integrate protection, control, and monitoring into a single, robust platform. Consequently, they deliver superior situational awareness for utilities and industrial facilities facing modern grid challenges.

Core Platform Benefits for Modern Operations

This family offers a unified hardware architecture, which simplifies maintenance and reduces spare parts inventory. Moreover, its modular, plug-and-play design cuts downtime during repairs by up to 50% in field reports. The platform's proven adaptability makes it ideal for modernizing older protection and control schemes. Therefore, organizations can enhance system reliability without a complete overhaul, protecting previous investments.

Enhanced Local Monitoring and Control Features

Large, intuitive human-machine interface (HMI) panels provide clear local oversight and control. These interfaces also serve as a reliable backup to central substation HMIs. As a result, operators maintain critical visibility into system status under all conditions, ensuring continuous operational confidence and reducing response time to anomalies by 30-40%.

Precision Synchronization and Measurement Capabilities

The series includes a built-in Phase Measurement Unit compliant with IEEE C37.118. This allows direct synchrophasor streaming from the protective device itself. Furthermore, embedded IEEE 1588 protocol support eliminates the need for dedicated timing wiring. This integration streamlines architecture and improves data accuracy for grid analytics, achieving sub-microsecond synchronization accuracy.

Future-Ready Communication and Interoperability

With advanced IEC 61850 Edition 2 certification, these devices ensure seamless system integration. They support routable GOOSE messaging for wide-area protection schemes. In addition, Parallel Redundancy Protocol (PRP) support delivers zero failover time, maximizing network availability. These features collectively reduce lifecycle costs by approximately 15-20% and optimize communication networks.

Broad Application Across the Power Ecosystem

Applications span generation, transmission, distribution, and major industrial systems. Key uses include substation automation, digital fault recording, and predictive maintenance. The URPlus variant specifically enables complex, system-wide monitoring and control solutions. Its diagnostics support data-driven decisions for improved asset health and extended equipment lifespan.

Industry Perspective: The Shift to Integrated Platforms

The trend in industrial automation clearly moves toward unified platforms like the UR family. We're observing a industry-wide consolidation where separate devices for protection, control, and metering are being replaced by multifunctional units. This shift is driven by both economic pressures and the need for richer data analytics. From an operational standpoint, the emphasis on interoperability and standard compliance is no longer optional but a baseline requirement. These relays address that need directly, offering a scalable path for grid modernization. Their design acknowledges that true resilience comes from both robust protection and intelligent, accessible data. The integration of PMU functionality directly into protection relays, as seen here, is particularly noteworthy—it turns a protective device into a grid visibility sensor.

Detailed Application Case: Mid-Voltage Industrial Plant Modernization

A chemical processing facility with a 13.8kV distribution system sought to upgrade its 20-year-old electromechanical relays. The plant experienced 2-3 unexplained trips annually, causing approximately $150,000 in production losses each time. They deployed 8 Multilin UR devices across 12 critical motor feeders and 2 main incoming lines.

Implementation: The UR relays were configured for differential motor protection, overload protection, and precise power metering. Using the built-in IEC 61850-9-2 process bus, they connected to merging units, reducing copper wiring by 60%.

Results: Within the first year, the system prevented two potential motor failures through early thermal overload warnings. Sequence of Events (SOE) recording with 1ms resolution pinpointed the source of a voltage dip that previously caused cascading trips. The plant has now operated for 18 months without a single unexplained protection trip. The predictive maintenance data from trend logs enabled them to reschedule a transformer maintenance, avoiding a planned $80,000 outage.

Key Metrics Achieved:
• Protection trip incidents reduced from 2.5/year to 0
• Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) reduced by 50% due to modular design
• Energy reporting accuracy improved to 99.5%, identifying $25,000/year in savings opportunities
• Commissioning time for each feeder protection reduced from 8 hours to 3 hours

Solutions Scenario: Utility Substation Automation Upgrade

A regional utility needed to upgrade a 69/12kV substation to support distributed renewable generation. The project required advanced grid visibility, fault location, and seamless integration with existing SCADA.

Solution: They implemented a Multilin URPlus-based scheme featuring:
• 3 URPlus relays for main transformer protection (87T, 51, 51N)
• 12 UR devices for feeder protection with PMU functionality
• Routable GOOSE for communication between substations
• PRP network for zero failover redundancy

Outcome: The system now provides real-time synchrophasor data to the control center, improving renewable integration capacity by 15%. The precise fault location feature reduced outage duration by an average of 47 minutes per event. The utility estimates a 22% reduction in operational costs over five years due to reduced maintenance and improved asset utilization.

Practical Implementation Recommendations

Based on field experience, we recommend conducting a thorough network design review before deployment, particularly when implementing IEC 61850-9-2 process bus architectures. Start with a pilot project on a non-critical feeder to validate settings and integration. Furthermore, leverage the SCL file import/export capability to ensure consistency across multiple devices. The data analytics potential is often underutilized—dedicate resources to actually use the metering and trending data for condition-based maintenance programs rather than just collecting it.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Q: What is the key difference between the UR and URPlus models?
A: The URPlus builds upon the standard UR platform with enhanced processing for complex, wide-area monitoring and advanced automation schemes. It specifically adds capabilities for system-wide synchrophasor applications, advanced fault location algorithms, and supports more complex protection schemes like breaker failure across multiple devices.

Q: How does the modular design reduce operational costs?
A: Common hardware and plug-in modules mean fewer unique spare parts are needed—typically reducing inventory by 40-60%. This simplifies inventory management and allows for faster, easier module swaps during maintenance, with most module replacements taking under 15 minutes compared to hours for full device replacement.

Q: Does this family support legacy communication protocols?
A: While championing modern standards like IEC 61850, the platform's renowned flexibility allows it to be adapted and integrated into environments with existing legacy schemes through available communication modules. It can support Modbus, DNP3, and IEC 60870-5-103/104 alongside modern protocols during transition periods.

Q: What advantage does IEEE 1588 time synchronization provide?
A: It allows precise, network-based clock synchronization across the entire substation, achieving accuracy better than 1 microsecond without dedicated wiring. This eliminates the cost of IRIG-B cabling (typically $200-$500 per device run) and simplifies system architecture while improving timestamp accuracy for event analysis.

Q: Can these relays be used for predictive maintenance?
A: Absolutely. The high-accuracy metering (0.2% for power measurements) and comprehensive data recording capabilities provide the trend analysis necessary for predictive maintenance. Facilities typically use thermal trend data for motors, circuit breaker operation timing, and insulation resistance trends to predict failures 3-6 months in advance, reducing unplanned outages by up to 70%.

Q: What cybersecurity features are included?
A: The platform includes multiple cybersecurity layers: role-based access control, password policies, audit logs, IEC 62351-compliant encryption for GOOSE and MMS, secure management ports, and support for network segregation. Regular firmware updates address emerging security threats in accordance with industry best practices.

Q: How does the R-GOOSE feature enable cost savings?
A: Routable GOOSE allows protective messages to travel beyond the local substation LAN over WAN networks. This enables Wide Area Protection and Control (WAPC) schemes without expensive dedicated communication channels. One utility reported saving approximately $300,000 in communication infrastructure costs for a 5-substation pilot by utilizing their existing fiber network with R-GOOSE.

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