IEC 61850-6 (SCL) - Final ballot on Configuration Language Edition 2

The most crucial part of the second edition of IEC 61850 "Communication networks and systems for power utility automation" -Part 6 "Configuration description language for communication in electrical substations related to IEDs" is available for final (FDIS) Ballot until November 06, 2009. This is the first part of Edition 2 that is out for Ballot.

The new edition fixes some technical issues of the first edition. Extensions are based on changes in other parts, e.g., Part 7-2 and 7-3; the engineering process, especially for configuration data exchange between system configuration tools, has been added.

Contact your national TC 57 committee for a copy if you want to do a final check of the document. The files distributed by IEC contain all xml schema files etc. needed to create and interpret SCL files.

Example SCL file from AREVA (.icd file), Edition 1 compliant.

Note that the SCL (Substation Configuration Language) would be better named: System Configuration Language. Main parts of the standard can be used for many other application domains. Any information that can be modeled with Logical Nodes and Data Objects according to IEC 61850 rules, can be used as domain specific "words". The communication of these "words" from a "sender" (Server and Publisher) to a "receiver" (Client and Subscriber) can be described in SCL. The communication may be realized with MMS (Client/Server), or GOOSE and SMV (Publisher/Subscriber).

The new "words" may be a "Fish Counter" in a hydro power plant or a "Bird Counter" in a wind turbine. SCL can describe (without any modification) that a device (Server) provides this information and that it can automatically be communicated by IEC 61850 reporting to another computer (Client) every day or be stored locally in an IEC 61850 log. The CSL file can be used to automatically configure the server and/or the client!