Friday, October 28, 2011

Use-Cases for Distributed Photovoltaic and Storage Systems

EPRI (Electric Power Research Institute, Palo Alto, USA) has been active in the research and development of the electrical power delivery systems. Just remember the projects UCA 1.0 (Utility Communication Architecture) and UCA 2.0. Both projects have contributed to the IEC TC 57 (Power System Management) and influenced several crucial standard series like the CIM, IEC 60870-6 TASE.2 and IEC 61850.

The work on the “Utility Communication Architecture” is going on in various IEC TC 57 projects and EPRI is still contributing to this process (especially to the definition of IEC 6185-90-7 - Object models for photovoltaic, storage, and other DER inverters). A very interesting EPRI report looks into the “Uses for Distributed Photovoltaic and Storage Systems”. The report lists and discusses briefly the following use-cases:

  • Energy Generation
  • Local Energy Storage to Compensate for Photovoltaic Intermittency
  • Use of Energy Storage for Arbitrage Benefit
  • Use of Local Energy Storage to Maximize Photovoltaic Generation Value
  • Energy Storage for Customer or Community Backup Power
  • Energy Storage to Reduce or Limit Peak Loading on the Utility System
  • Energy Storage for Load Following
  • Energy Storage to Reduce Customer Peak Demand
  • Energy Storage for Local Power Quality Control
  • System Stabilization – Transient Watt Modulation with Line Frequency
  • System Stabilization - Transient Watt Modulation with Line Voltage
  • Var Production for Voltage Regulation
  • Var Production for Voltage Stabilization
  • Var Production for Power Factor Management
  • Var Compensation for Intermittent Generation
  • Connect/Disconnect from Grid – Non Islanding
  • Connect/Disconnect from Grid – Islanding
  • On/Off Control of PV and/or Storage Inverter
  • Adjusting Maximum Generation Level
  • Metering Energy from Photovoltaic or Storage Device
  • State Monitoring
  • Event Reporting by Exception
  • Event Logging

Click HERE for the 44 page report on use cases.
Click HERE for an overview about IEC 61850-90-7.

In an up-to-date publication of the German VDI nachrichten it is reported about storage possibilities on 2011-10-28 that:

  • The capacity of all German pumped-storage hydropower plants would provide power for 1 hour.
  • The capacity of 42 million German cars would last for 24 hours.
  • The capacity of the German oil and gas storages would last at least for 2 months.
  • The storage of “Wind or PV Power” (Converting Electricity to Natural Gas) is also an option.

Click HERE for an R&D report on Converting Electricity to Natural Gas.

Whatever the energy Mix will be – there is a crucial need for information and communication systems supporting the future power delivery system!

The good news is that there is no need to develop standards for information and communication systems from scratch! There are sufficient standards available, implemented and tested so that the power industry can straight use them: IEC 60870-6 TASE.2, CIM, IEC 61850, IEC 61400-25, …

Thursday, October 27, 2011

“Visit” a U.S. Power Grid Control Center

The New York Times provides some information about the work in Control Centers of the U.S. Power Grid … quite interesting information.

Click HERE for the article.

If you want to apply for a job managing the North American power grid, you have to answer communication related questions like this (from NERC):

6. Standard COM-001-1, encourages “redundant and diversely routed” telecommunications facilities. Why "would “diversely routed” facilities be encouraged?

  1. So communications can be simultaneously sent and received over the redundant paths.
  2. So as not to create a monopoly for one particular telecommunication service.
  3. So more neighboring systems can tie into the telecommunications network
  4. So one specific problem could not eliminate redundant facilities

If you would answer with 2. … you may … hmmm … ;-)

Click HERE for this and more questions.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

SGIP calls for Comments on Draft NIST Framework and Roadmap for Smart Grid Interoperability Standards, Release 2.0

The NIST SGIP (Smart Grid Interoperability Panel) has published the

Draft NIST Framework and Roadmap for Smart Grid Interoperability Standards, Release 2.0

for public comments via Federal Register Notice on October 25, 2011

Click HERE for the NIST Framework and Comments page.
Click HERE for the Draft Release 2.0 [PDF, 5.3 MB].

What is new in the Release 2.0 (Draft)?

Interoperable standards and protocols for the Smart(er) Grids are the focus of NIST. To reach these objectives NIST developed a three-phase plan:

  1. To accelerate the identification of an initial set of standards;
  2. To establish a robust Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) to sustain the development of the many additional standards that will be needed; and
  3. To set up a conformity testing and certification infrastructure.

The results of Release 1 (2009-11) have been improved in the draft Release 2. The most crucial result so far (in my view) is the fact that the relevant standards listed in Release 1 has been accepted – one way or the other – by the stake holders in the Smart(er) Grid community! There are some additional standards listed – but the list from 2009 is still representing the core standards.

The most crucial result of all these activities in the power utility domain is that we have prevented a situation found in the industrial automation market with more than 100 Fieldbus standards – with some 50+ in a single standard (IEC 61158)!

Draft Release 2 identifies 20 Smart Grid-relevant standards, 15 other requirement and guideline documents, 9 cyber security documents; and another list of some 60 specifications/requirements that are listed for further review. The 20 standards are:

  Standards  
1 BACnet Building Automation
2 ANSI C12 Metering
3 LON Various applications
4 IEEE 1815 (DNP3) Substation and feeder automation
5 ICCP (IEC 60870-6 TASE.2) Inter-control center communication
6 IEC 61850 Power utility automation (Transmission, Distribution, Generation, …) at field level
7 IEC 61968/61970 CIM; communication between control center systems
8 IEEE C37.118/IEC 61850-90-5 Phasor measurements
9 IEEE 1547 Physical and electrical interconnections between utilities and distributed generation (DG) and storage.
10 IEEE 1588/IEC61588 Time synchronization
11 IETF RFC 6272 Internet Protocols
12 IEEE 1901 Broadband Power Line
13 Multispeak Application software integration within the utility operations domain
14 NEMA SG AMI I Smart meters
15 SB WEQ19, REQ18 Energy Usage Information
16 NISTIR 7761 NIST Guidelines for Assessing Wireless Standards for Smart Grid Applications
17 OpenADR Open Automated Demand Response
18 OPC-UA Exposes complex data and metadata defined by other information model specifications (e.g. IEC 61850, BACnet, OpenADR).
19 GML Open Geospatial Consortium, Geography Markup Language
20 Zigbee Smart Energy Profile 2.0 Home Area Network (HAN) Device Communications and Information Model
  Requirements and Guidelines  
21 OpenHAN Home area network (HAN)
22 AEIC Guidelines Testing criteria for standards-based AMI
23 SAE J1772 SAE Electric Vehicle and Plug in Hybrid Electric Vehicle Conductive Charge Coupler
24 SAE J2836/1 Use Cases for Communication Between Plug-in Vehicles and the Utility Grid
25 IPRM SGTCC Interoperability Process Reference Manual (SGIP‘s Smart Grid Testing and Certification Committee)
26 --  
  Cyber Security  
27 Security Profile for Advanced Metering Infrastructure, v 1.0  
28 Department of Homeland Security (DHS), National Cyber Security Recommendations
29

DHS Cyber Security
Procurement Language for Control Systems

Guidance to procuring Cyber security technologies for control systems products and services
30 IEC 62351 Parts 1-8 This family of standards defines information security for power system control operations.
31 IEEE 1686 Intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) to accommodate critical infrastructure protection
32 CIP 002-009 NERC Critical Infrastructure Protection
33 NIST Special Publication (SP) 800 Cyber security standards and guidelines for federal information systems, including those for the bulk power system.
34 IEC 61851 Charging electric road vehicles
35

NISTIR 7628

Introduction to NISTIR 7628
Guidelines for
Smart Grid Cyber Security

The second list comprises standards for review like GPS, IEC 61400-25 (IEC 61850 for wind turbines), IEEE P1901 (Broadband powerline), ISO/IEC 8824 ASN.1 (Abstract Syntax Notation), IEEE 802, 3GPP, 2G, 3G, 4G, ISA SP 100 (Wireless), IEC 61000, ISA SP 99, ISO 27000, WS-Security, …

The second list contains standards that do (to my interpretation) NOT contain any competing solutions for IEC 61968/70, IEC 61850, IEEE 1815 DNP3, … they cover other crucial aspects. And there is very little overlap between the 35 standards listed above.

Congratulation to all people involved in the work of SGIP!

It would be very helpful to provide your comments to the draft – in order to reach a global consensus.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

New Embedded Modules from TQ with IEC 61850 and IEC 61400-25 using ARM Architectures and Linux

Two New Embedded Modules developed by TQ with IEC 61850 und IEC 61400-25 (using ARM Architectures, Linux and the very simple and powerful SystemCorp IEC61850 API) are available:

ARM9 Modul with i.MX28 from Freescale
Click HERE for more details.

ARM11 Modul with i.MX35 from Freescale
Click HERE for more details.

TQ is conducting a one day introduction into the standards IEC 61850 and IEC 61400-25 and demonstrates how to build applications for IEC 61850 based on the above controllers.

Date: 2011-12-14 (Wednesday)

Location:
TQ-Systems GmbH
Mühlstraße 2
82229 Seefeld
Germany (near Munich)

Click HERE for more details on the seminar.

Click HERE for the Program (Presentation Language: German)

If you are interested in a presentation in English, please contact TQ.

NEW Hirschmann Ethernet Switches for Substations and other Critical Applications

Hirschmann is (to my knowledge) the leading manufacturers of Ethernet Switches for mission critical industrial applications. Hirschmann is also quite active in the domain of substations (IEC 61850, …). The following new products offer standardized features like RSTP (Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol), PRP (Parallel Redundancy Protocol) and HSR (High-availability Seamless Redundancy).

With these components there is sufficient timeliness guaranteed in mission critical substation protection and automation systems. This is far above the old “yellow cable” Ethernet of the 80s and 90s.

Hirschmann™ presents switches from its new RSP family Redundancy with zero switchover time:
Click HERE for further information (English)
Click HERE for further information (German)

Hirschmann™ once again demonstrates its market leadership in Industrial
Ethernet Hirschmann™ switches support seamless redundancy. The new PRP (Parallel Redundancy Protocol) and HSR (High-availability Seamless
Redundancy)
protocols are two newly developed redundancy methods that significantly increase the availability and reliability of network connections:
Click HERE for further information (English)
Click HERE for further information (German)

Hirschmann™ markets new Embedded Ethernet components Module with the functional scope of a standalone switch:
Click HERE for further information (English)

White Paper on Media Redundancy Concepts - High Availability in Industrial Ethernet:
Click HERE for further information (English)

Monday, October 24, 2011

Cleanup of IEC 61850-7-4 Edition 2

The edition 2 of the base information models of IEC 61850 (published in 2010 as IEC 61850-7-4) has some definitions that need corrections. You can find the most crucial ones documented on the IEC 61850 Tissue Database (Technical Issues).

Click HERE for the complete list of part 7-4 Ed2.

Example:

Annex A defines the Interpretation of mode and behaviour

There is an obvious error in the table. When Beh=on AND incoming data with q=test THEN the expected behaviour of LN shall be “Processed as invalid”, and not “Processed as valid”.

Recommendation for readers of the various parts of IEC 61850: Please check the list of the Tissue Database in order to figure out the corrections made by the IEC 61850 community. As the above example shows, the corrections could be very critical!

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Need Help regarding MMS (ISO 9506)?

Experts that are looking for further helpful information on MMS (Manufacturing Message Specification – ISO 9506) can download a report published as part of MSc Thesis "Security in Industrial Networks" in Norway, 2007:

Click HERE for the links to two papers.

Unfortunately the authors did not mention IEC 61850 and IEC 61400-25 as the most crucial standard series that use MMS.

The security measures for MMS are defined in IEC 62351-4.

Click HERE for additional information on security and IEC 61850/MMS.

Click HERE for find more information on MMS.

Improvements of IEC 61850-6 (System Configuration Language) and other parts

The IEC 61850 System Configuration Language (SCL) as defined in IEC 61850-6 Edition 2 is a very crucial, successful and comprehensive part of the standard series IEC 61850. This part has a major impact of System Design, System Engineering and Device Configuration Tools.

The standard defines many concepts and a lot of details! People in the SCL Team and other groups have worked hard to provide a consistent and complete specification. As usual, there are typos, incompletely defined details, … The IEC 61850 community takes these inconsistencies and errors very serious.

Since the publication in 2009 there have 21 tissues (technical issues) been reported on part 6:

Click HERE for the list of the IEC 61850-6 Edition 2 tissues.

One typical tissue (Tissue 719) is about the “maxAttributes” definition in clause 9.3.1:

The definition of ConfDataSet - maxAttributes is confusing especially the part in brackets (an FCDA can contain several attributes).
2 interpretations seem possible :
- maxAttributes = max nb of members in the dataset
- maxAttributes = max sum of attributes of all dataset member

The tissue has helped to clarify what is meant: “ConfDataSet.maxAttributes shall define the maximum number of members in a data set …”

Click HERE for the complete tissue 719.

Please check the tissue database if you find anything in the published standards (of any Edition) that may be wrong or not complete or unclear. Before you post a tissue check if it has already been reported and solved.

Click HERE for the Tissue Database entry on IEC 61850 and HERE for IEC 61400-25.

You can help the IEC 61850 community to improve the standard by checking the content of the tissue data bases and posting your findings on possible deficiencies.

Thanks!

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Power Outage in San Diego on September 08, 2011, and Synchrophasors

The other day I reported on standards for synchrophasor measurements. The question was and still is: Could synchrophasor measurements prevent huge black outs? Some say yes – others say maybe or no.

Today it has been reported by Platts (Atlanta) that “The installation of phasor measurement units on part of the power grid affected by the September 8 power outage in Arizona, California and Mexico is aiding the data collection process as entities look into the cause of the outage, the head of the North American Electric Reliability Council said Monday. … Synchrophasors provide precise measurements of critical grid operating data from devices called phasor measurement units, which inform operators of conditions on a real-time basis. The goal of having the units in place is to help operators see conditions deteriorate and take actions to avoid large outages, Paul Barber of the NERC board of trustees said Tuesday.”

Obviously the synchrophasor measurements could not prevent the power outage on September 8, 2011. There needs to be experts to interpret the values!! and understand what to do to stabilize the electric system … or software needs to be written by experts …

What is missing in many organizations to keep control over the electric power delivery system? Peopleware!! Well educated Experts that understand the electrical system !! Measurements are a tool: Even a fool with a tool is a fool. And: A fool with a tool can foul-up a system much faster than a fool without a tool. In this regard, IEC 61850 is also just a tool.

Click HERE for the complete report from today.

Monday, October 17, 2011

IEC 61400-25 at the Two-Day Windpower Monthly Forum in Hamburg

Anders Johnsson, Marketing & Standardization Coordinator of USE61400-25 User Group, will give a presentation under the title "How close are we to standardization of wind turbine data?”

at the Wind Farm Data Management & Analysis - Harnessing your data to optimize performance, reduce downtime & increase profitability, a Two-Day Windpower Monthly Forum 15- 16 November 2011, Hamburg, Germany.

He will present the results of the standardization work done so far and provide an outlook.

Click HERE for more details.

Click HERE for a brief introduction to IEC 61850 and IEC 61400-25 [pdf].

New Book on CIM (Common Information Model)

IEC TC 57 (Power System Management) publishes standards for control center internal information models (CIM: IEC 61968 and IEC 61970) and for monitoring and controlling the process level (IEC 61850 and IEC 61400-25).

Four experts involved in the application of CIM in projects have written a book on CIM to provide an introduction and describe the basic use cases. The book will be available in January 2012.

Click HERE for a description of the book and order information.

Click HERE for a brief introduction to IEC 61850 and IEC 61400-25.

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Sensors in Smart(er) Grids Not Only For Electrical Measurement

Smart Grid (condition monitoring) Sensors may detect faulting fuses, insulators, conductors, transformers, as well as fires, ice, water level, floods, oil spills & air pollution conditions and and …

Myriads of sensors will be installed in the context of Smart(er) Grids the years to come.

Click HERE for a 10 minute video on various use cases.
Click HERE for a roll-out of sensors in a distribution network. 
Click HERE on a discussion “How many protocol interfaces can we afford?"
Click HERE for a project where IEC 61850 is used for exchanging sensor data.

With IEC 61850 – one ne or the other – it is possible to let all sensors speak a SINGLE LANGUAGE. Intelligent sensors may speak IEC 61850 integrated in the sensor itself, or the sensors may communicate to an aggregation device (like an RTU) that provides IEC 61850 connectivity to the next level of monitoring and so on.

Click HERE for the IEC 61850-7-4 Ed2 Logical Node STMP (Temperature Supervision).

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Open Source Synchrophasor Framework for IEC 61850-90-5 under development

On October 02, 2011, I announced that the IEC TR 61850-90-5: “Use of IEC 61850 to transmit synchrophasor information according to IEEE C37.118” is on its way for official publication; expected by end of 2011.

To accelerate the application of the technology defined by IEC 61850-90-5, Cisco, Inc. (CSCO) and Systems Integration Specialists Company, Inc. (SISCO) have begun an open source project intended to provide an implementation framework for synchronized phasor measurement communications.

They expect that an “open source project will foster innovation and faster adoption of the standards using IP-multicast and a scalable security architecture´. … For the open source project, Cisco will provide source code for the Group Domain of Interpretation (GDOI) protocol. This protocol provides the type of advanced cyber key management services that are needed to secure communications for power system automation applications, including substation automation and protection, as well as for Smart Grid applications such as metering and demand response. SISCO will provide the source code for the IEC 61850-90-5 communication profile and the integration of that profile with the GDOI code. …”

Click HERE for the press complete release published by Cisco.

It is very likely that this project will push the application of IEC 61850 in North America and all over.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

IEC 61850 Training Courses in Sao Paulo and Frankfurt

Plan now for attending one of the training courses conducted by NettedAutomation:

Why should you attend? IEC 61850 is a bit more than DNP3, IEC 60870-5-101/104 or any of the many field busses … IEC 61850 is THE solution when it comes to advanced information, information exchange and system configuration in the electric power delivery world and in many domains outside. Understanding the basics of IEC 61850 and IEC 61400-25 will help you to get smoothly to systems that are based on interoperable devices.

Sao Paulo (Brazil), 21.-23. November 2011 (NEW DATE)
3 day IEC 61850 Seminar/Hands-on Training

Frankfurt (Germany), 09.-11. May 2012
Frankfurt (Germany), 17.-19. October 2012
3 day IEC 61850/61400-25 Seminar/Hands-on Training (NettedAutomation) with with several embedded Controller Development Kits (Linux, RTOS, ...), Starter Kit (Windows DDL), and several other demo software

?? (USA), Remote Conference, September 2012
2 day Seminar (NettedAutomation) on Power System Communication covering IEC 61850, IEC 61400-25, DNP3, NIST Interoperability Roadmap, Smart Grids, ...

Plug and Play for IEC 61850 – Supported by Siemens

Siemens pushes for a crucial extension of IEC 61850: to allow Plug and Play features for IEDs according to a future IEC 61850:

IEC 61850’s primary focus (in the late 90’s) was on Substation Automation – this is still the crucial application domain today and for a long time. The application of IEC 61850 in various power generation and distribution application domains is likely to require further features – not yet defined. Several projects (E-Energy in Germany, SGIP’ Priority Action Plan (PAP), and other) have investigated in finding gaps in the standard definitions. One result is the definition of a Plug&Play extension developed by Siemens. Siemens has registered their ideas at the ip.com website. What does that mean? “Defensive publishing is a low cost way to prevent competitors from obtaining patents and protect your freedom to practice.”

Click HERE for a description what “Defensive Publishing” means.

Excerpt:

“The Plug and Play reference architecture based on well-known protocols like UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) and DPWS (Devices Profiles for Web Services) is used. Several exchanges and additions, e.g. with respect to discovery mechanisms, are proposed enabling IEC 61850 to support Plug & Play for "Smart Distribution".”

Click HERE for more information.

The work on Web Services that has been proposed by a New Work Item Proposal will become a crucial work for future applications.

Substation Automation Specialist Wanted in the U.S. – IEC 61850 is a MUST

Siemens offers an open position for a Product Management Specialist for Substation Automation. One of the position requirements is “Must have worked with advanced digital Substation Automation using IEC 61850 protocol and functionalities”

Click HERE for the description.

Monday, October 10, 2011

Long-Term Supply Agreement on Ethernet Components between Hirschmann and Yokogawa Electric Corporation

“Yokogawa will use Hirschmann Industrial Ethernet switches [Neckartenzlingen, Germany] in their Vnet/IP® high-speed control networks and provide maintenance services to facilitate the deployment of highly reliable control networks. Plant control communication network in markets such as oil & gas, power transmission & distribution, pharmaceuticals and water/wastewater must endure harsh environments with extreme ambient temperatures and corrosive gasses.”

Hirschmann is also deeply involved in IEC 61850 standardization and application. More to come …

Click HERE for the news report from Belden.

Utility Experience with IEC 61850 at eThekwini Electricity

There are just a few reports from utility personnel describing the impact of IEC 61850 on substation protection and automation systems. A report from eThekwini Electricity provides some results of the application of IEC 61850 based systems. Worth to read report.

With regard to the Financial Implications the reports states:

“An exercise has been carried out to determine the financial impact
of the new philosophy. This exercise has produced some better
than expected results.”

Click HERE for the complete paper [7 pages pdf].

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Wireshark Analyzer to encode MMS, GOOSE, and SAV Messages

In July 2011 I reported about a problem analyzing MMS messages with Wireshark.

A comment to that post suggests the following successful solution … configure the analyzer as follows:

Set in PRES protocol preferences new user context item:

Context Id: 3
Syntax Name OID: 1.0.9506.2.1

Select Edit and Preferences at the bottom:

image

Select Protocols … and PRES:

image

Edit PRES and select New and enter the values from above::

image

Thanks for the recommendation!

Have a great week.

Market Trend: IEC 61850-9-2 Sampled Values accepted

Omicron has published a paper on the benefits and acceptance of the IEC 61850-9-2 sampled values:

  • English (Page 47-49)
  • Deutsch (Page 43-45)
  • By Dr Fred Steinhauser:
    Technology of the future: Sampled Values provide many benefits for the power systems of tomorrow

    Abstracts: “IEC 61850 defines several kinds of communication mechanisms. The Client/Server communication for SCADA and the GOOSE protocol for peer-to-peer status messaging have been widely adopted in a quite short time. Now, after years of experience with these new protocols, also the application of Sampled Values has become a common topic.”

    Friday, October 7, 2011

    New Work Item Proposal on IEC 61850-8-2 – Mapping to Web Services

    As expected, the New Work Item Proposal on Web Service Mapping has been officially published on 2011-10-07 for ballot:

    Future IEC 61850-8-2: Specific communication service mapping (SCSM) – Mappings to web-services (Document 57/1181/NP).

    Closing Date of ballot: 2012-01-13

    In order to get a copy of the NP document contact your TC 57 national committee.

    Sunday, October 2, 2011

    IEC 61850-90-5 defines How to Use IEC 61850 to transmit synchrophasor information according to IEEE C37.118

    The new Technical Report IEC TR 61850-90-5: “Use of IEC 61850 to transmit synchrophasor information according to IEEE C37.118” is on its way for official publication.

    Synchrophasor information are measured and calculated by PMUs (Phasor Measurement Units) are used to assess the condition of the electrical power delivery system. The synchrophasors and related message formats transmit synchrophasor information over long distances. The payload is defined in IEEE C37.118.

    IEC 61850-90-5 will provide a way of exchanging synchrophasor information between PMUs and WAMPAC (Wide Area Monitoring, Protection, and Control), and for and between control center applications.

    IEC 61850-90-5 also provides communication profile extensions to allow to route GOOSE and sampled value messages (IEC 61850-8-1 and IEC 61850-9-2) using UDP/IP. These routable messages can be utilized to transport any IEC 61850 information as well as synchrophasor information.

    Applications comprise:

    • Synchro-check
    • Adaptive relaying
    • Out-of-step (OOS) protection
    • Situational awareness
    • State Estimation and on-line security assessment
    • Archive data (event & continuous)
    • Special Protection Schemes
    • Predictive Dynamic Stability Maintaining System
    • Under Voltage Load Shedding