Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Read One of the Best Papers on IEC 61850 ever Published

Eric A. Udren (a friend of mine) from Quanta Technology, LLC of Raleigh, North Carolina has written one of the best papers on the application of IEC 61850 in general and in the USA I ever read:

What Drives the Business Case for IEC 61850?
published in the December 2016 issue of the PAC World magazine.
This paper summarizes the experience of more than 10 years with the application of the standard series IEC 61850. It is a very easy to read and understand summary of the content of my training courses. After more than 230 training courses I conducted globally since 2003 and more than 4,200 experts educated in these courses I fully agree with the crucial recommendations of the paper:
Eric states at the very beginning (3rd sentence!): " ... one must first understand that IEC 61850 is not just a communications protocol." Well said. He lists many crucial facets.
The main part of Eric's conclusion is [highlights are added by myself]:
"The following action items can help the utility to achieve technical success and lowest life cycle costs:
  • Develop requirements for and relationships with product vendors, who must commit to support interoperable and sustainable products and designs over the service life of the PAC design.
  • Apply the sustainable design principles of the previous sections. If some of these seem unfamiliar, get expert help from vendors and from vendor-independent industry experts with experience in PAC system design and integration.
  • Create strong, rigid design standards; develop broadly useable documentation for new PAC design features like network configuration, data flows, and GOOSE messaging connections of functional points.
  • Set up rigid documentation and configuration management systems. With IEC 61850, much of the PAC design is no longer evident in the physical installation – this managed design information is the only tool to maintain the system.
  • Create a development laboratory to validate the performance of the design. Keep the laboratory throughout the installation life to train personnel, to troubleshoot bugs that arise in the field, and to test new product or firmware insertions in the existing design before authorizing those for field use.
  • Develop and run training programs for field maintenance personnel, including hands-on participation and feedback during the design and laboratory test phases.
  • Develop and run training programs for other enterprise stakeholders, including system planning, capital planning, purchasing, and operations teams.
  • After the pilot or trial phase, plan a crisp organizational transition to the new design at the fastest sustainable rate."
Click HERE to access the paper for free.

There have been a lot of misleading and strange statements on the benefits of IEC 61850 communicated ... trust the real experts like Eric Udren ...

One of the real show-stoppers of a beneficial application is the lack of education of many engineers. We offer the right experience and knowledge for your people to harvest the benefits of the application of IEC 61850 and other standards:

Click HERE for the latest announcements of courses in German.
Click HERE for the latest announcements of courses in English.

I look forward meeting you in one of the public courses or in an inhouse seminar. Peopleware is one of the most crucial issues in future energy systems.

Thursday, February 16, 2017

IEC-61850-Seminare in Deutsch (Mai und Dezember 2017)

NettedAutomation GmbH bietet in 2017 zwei IEC-61850-Seminare zu unschlagbaren Preisen in Karlsruhe an:

09.-12. Mai 2017 
05.-08. Dezember 2017

Die drei (3) Blöcke (1 Tag + 2 Tage + 1 Tag) können einzeln oder in Kombination gebucht werden. Sie entscheiden selbst, ob Sie nur einen Tag von Ihrem Arbeitsplatz fern bleiben möchten oder zwei, drei oder vier. Je nachdem, wieviel Zeit Sie investieren wollen oder können und welchen Bedarf Sie haben.

Lernen Sie, wie über 4.000 Teilnehmer vor Ihnen, was IEC 61850 und andere Normen wie IEC 60870-5-10x oder IEC 62351 (Security) bedeuten. Gewinnen Sie einen Einblick in relevante Realisierungen wie die FNN-Steuerbox oder VHPready, die auf IEC 61850 aufbauen. Verstehen Sie, wie Feldbusse über lostengünstige Gateways in die Anlagen eingebunden werden können.

HIER klicken, um zur Beschreibung und den Anmeldeunterlagen zu gelangen [pdf, 430 KB].

Beachten Sie auch, dass die meisten Seminare als Inhouse-Kurse stattfinden! Falls Sie Interesse an einem Inhouse-Kurs (in deutsch, englisch, italienisch oder schwedisch) haben sollten kontaktieren Sie uns bitte!

IEC TC 57 has Published Several New Documents

IEC TC 57 has published several new documents related to IEC 61850 and IEC 62351 (Security):

(57/1840/RVC)
IEC 61850-7-3: Amendment 1 - Communication networks and systems for power utility automation - Part 7-3: Basic communication structure - Common data classes
The amendment has been accepted with 100 % in favour

(57/1838/FDIS)
IEC 62351-9: Data and communications security –
Part 9: Cyber security key management for power system equipment
voting closes 2017-03-17

(57/1835/RVN)
Communication networks and systems for power utility automation - Part XXX: System management for IEC 61850 (proposed IEC 61850-XXX TS)
The new work item proposal has been accepted with 100 % in favour

(57/1834/RVN)
IEC 61850-7-7: Basic communication structure – Machine-processable format of IEC 61850-related data models for tools
The new work item proposal has been accepted with almost 100 % in favour

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Seminar on Protection and Control in Stockholm (18-22 Sep / 10-13 Oct 2017)

FMTP, KTH, OPAL RT, and NettedAutomation offer a very comprehensive training courses on IEC 61850 and related standards

Stockholm-Arlanda (Airport)
18-22 September 2017
Click HERE for details
Karlsruhe (Germany)
10-13 October 2017
Click HERE for details

Thursday, February 2, 2017

Wind Energy Generation Systems - About to Use and Extend SCL

IEC TC 88 (Wind energy generation systems) has just published a new work item proposal for the series IEC 61400-25 (Communications for monitoring and control of wind power plants):

(88/621/NP):
Part 25-7: Communications for monitoring and control of wind power plants –
Configuration description language for communication in wind automation systems related to IEDs


The voting closes 2017-04-21.

The scope of this NWIP is to describe the adoption of the System Configuration description Language (SCL) defined in IEC 61850-6 to the wind domain.