ABB uses IEC 61850 for integrated power and process control in Greece

ABB has won in December 2009 an order worth $26 million from Hellenic Petroleum SA to provide an integrated power and automation system for the upgrade of Hellenic Petroleum’s Elefsina refinery, west of Athens. The environmentally friendly refinery will manufacture products in accordance with best in class technology and global standards to minimize environmental impact.

ABB will install a fully automated power management and load shedding system based on the 800xA automation platform and IEC 61850 compatible communication networks. Integrating the electrical and automation system on the common 800xA platform provides additional benefits including reduced maintenance, engineering and overall lifecycle costs.

Click HERE for the full press release.

2009 comes to a close - 2010 is about to come

As the year 2009 comes to a close, I want to say "Thank You!" for supporting the standardization of solutions for a smarter grid in 2009 and for using my knowledge and experience in the field of information technology for power systems.

I wish you and your family a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year 2010 - and successful applications of standards like IEC 61850, IEC 61400-25, IEC 61968/70 (CIM), TASE.2, DNP3, ...

The year 2009 was quite busy with many public and in-house courses and consultancy services on IEC 61850 and related standards. The interest in IEC 61850 has picked up in 2009 all over. What we see now is that we could expect even more interest in 2010. Many utilities are in the process of planning to equip first substation with IEC 61850 conformant substation IEDs (protection, control, monitoring, ...).

During 2009 we have seen the US NIST activities on Smart Grids popping up. In this context we see a lot of challenges to get "sustainable interoperable" solutions for power systems.

What concerns me is that the pace of events with regard to the use of IT is accelerating very very steep! The use of standards progresses faster than usual expected. All experts I know are quite busy. What we need is: more well educated people in the power business.

I look forward to helping you to get all information and experience you need in the application of advanced standards as listed above.

Click HERE for a discussion on education of engineers in the power industry and HERE for a list of of our 70+ up-to-date seminar modules.

IEEE Smart Grid Web Portal

IEEE has launched a new web portal on Smart Grid activities to support the many activities in the domain of making the grids smarter. The portal is intended to provide the "latest information on IEEE’s involvement in the area of Smart Grid including conferences, publications, standards, educational programs and public policy."

Click HERE to visit the portal.

The focus seems to be on North American solutions. The list of "IEEE Approved Standards Related to Smart Grid" ignores many other International Standards (e.g., published by IEC). The page "IEEE Smart Grid Standards in Development" lists more than 30 (!) standard projects related to smarter grids.

Which international organization is about to coordinate the development of standards for the many different aspects of smarter grids? There seems to be some competition. It would be advantage for the global community to have - more ore less - a single set of standards for smarter grids. IEC should play a crucial role in getting a consistent set of standards (including IEC/IEEE double logo standards) ... in order to prevent the situation we have in the international fieldbus standardization with tooooo many standard solutions in one (!) standard: IEC 61158.
Click HERE to see the list of filedbus standards.

Interoperability for Intelligent Devices for Transportation

A very comprehensive set of standards for information models and information exchange has been published for ITS (Intelligent Transportation Systems; defined and used in the U.S.). One crucial objective is to reach Interoperability: "A standards-based approach to integration helps to facilitate the exchange of transportation data as well as more easily accommodate future equipment replacements, systems upgrades, and system expansions."

The standard NTCIP 1213, for example, defines a couple of information models that are also defined in IEC 61850.

NTCIP 1213 v02.19 (National Transportation Communications for ITS Protocol -- Object Definitions for Electrical and Lighting Management
Systems (ELMS))

Examples of three phase voltages for Delta and Y, current and power:

BranchcircuitEntry::= SEQUENCE {
...
branchcircuitVoltageAB INTEGER,
branchcircuitVoltageBC INTEGER,
branchcircuitVoltageCA INTEGER,
branchcircuitVoltageAN INTEGER,
branchcircuitVoltageBN INTEGER,
branchcircuitVoltageCN INTEGER,
branchcircuitCurrent   INTEGER,
branchcircuitPower     INTEGER
...
}

These models are mapped to MIB (SNMP) and communicated, e.g., in ASN.1 BER - as is the case for IEC 61850-8-1. It would be nice to use the IEC 61850-7-4 MMXU (three phase electrical measurements for all applications - independent of transportation, distribution, generation, ...).

Smart Power Distribution Grids will have a lot of relations to Transportation Systems and vice versa.
No Power System - NO Transportation!

The NIST Smart Grid activities list the NTCIP part 1213 in the SGIP Identified Standards (number 31).

Click HERE for the ITS website ... provides free access to model and protocol standards, e.g. part 1213 can be accessed for free (registration required).
Click HERE for more information on the ITS Standards Background.