IEC 61850 is no longer a novelty

ZIV USA states: "IEC 61850 is no longer a novelty. Its acceptance is growing and the number of practical applications in service that utilize it continues to increase. However, in the majority of applications all of the devices originate from the same manufacturer. Only a few projects have been converted into a real example of interoperability between devices from different suppliers to demonstrate in practice the viability and the success of the standardization process."

Currently there are many discussions about the "IEC 61850 interoperability".

What does the standard IEC 61850-1 define?

interoperability

the ability of two or more IEDs from the same vendor, or different vendors, to exchange in-formation and use that information for correct execution of specified functions.

interchangeability
the ability to replace a device supplied by one manufacturer with a device supplied by another manufacturer, without making changes to the other elements in the system.

The interoperability ment in IEC 61850 is the communication interoperability! But, users usually want to have function interoperability! The function interoperability requires the FUNCTIONS to be defined - which is not (yet) the case in IEC 61850!

IEC 61850:

• DOES NOT standardize (application) functions like interlocking function NOR the distribution of a function (1 or n IEDs) !!
• Standardizes the information produced and consumed (3000+) by functions and how information is exchanged (get/set, control, report, log, GOOSE, SV …)
• Standardizes a language to describe the substation topology, information models, communication, binding to process, the data flow, … (SCL – Substation Configuration Language; IEC 61850-6)

Interchangeability is NOT AT ALL defined in IEC 61850!!

Download a comprehensive document on IEC 61850 from ZIV (link to pdf file 11 MB can be found there).