End-to-End Validation of an IEC 61850-Based SCADA System Using Structured SCL Engineering and Secondary Injection Testing

Currently, the transition of electrical substations from local control schemes to remote supervision platforms has accelerated the adoption of the IEC 61850 standard, making comprehensive validation methodologies essential. In this context, this paper presents an end-to-end validation strategy for a SCADA system, backed by structured Substation Configuration Language (SCL) engineering and secondary injection testing applied to protection IEDs. To achieve this, data modeling was organized around logical nodes and specific datasets tailored for measurement, control, and protection functions. The proposed approach was experimentally evaluated under nominal operating conditions as well as single-phase and three-phase fault scenarios, simultaneously assessing both the functional response and communication performance. The results show latencies under 80 ms for critical events, synchronization deviations of less than 2 ms, and a nearly 70% reduction in network traffic by utilizing reporting services instead of traditional polling schemes. Ultimately, these findings demonstrate that pairing proper SCL engineering with secondary injection tests yields an effective, reliable, and reproducible method for the operational validation of SCADA systems under the IEC 61850 standard.