Monday, April 25, 2016

IEC is about to prepare the "Use of IEC 61850 for electrical energy storage systems"

IEC TC 57 has just sent a 75+ pages draft document for comments by the national committees:

Draft IEC TR 61850-90-9 – Communication networks and systems for power utility automation – Part 90-9: Use of IEC 61850 for electrical energy storage systems

See: 57/1715/DC

The document is a very comprehensive document that provides a list of use-cases and solutions on how to use and extend the IEC 61850 models for electrical energy storage systems.

The



It is recommended for the various stakeholders to get more deeply involved into the further steps to get a standard information model for electrical storage systems!!

Sample use-case:



This document fits well into the set of drafts that are needed for power distribution systems.

More to come!

Friday, April 15, 2016

HMS exhibits IEC 60870-5-104 and IEC 61850 Anybus SG Gateways at Hannover Fair and SPS IPC Drives

Anybus SG-gateways - solving Smart Grid communication challenges!
The Anybus® SG-gateway™ family is designed to specifically target Demand Response (networking of industrial electric loads) and Virtual Power Plants (networking of energy resources like biogas plants or combined heat and power units) applications.

The gateways will be shown in action at the following two events in 2016:

Hannover Messe
Hannover, Deutschland
25. - 29. April 2016
Halle 8, Stand D11

SPS IPC Drives
Nürnberg, Deutschland
22. - 24. November 2016
Halle 2, Stand 2-438

Protocols supported so far:
IEC61850 client/server, IEC60870-5-104 client/server, Modbus RTU master/ slave, Modbus TCP client/server, EtherNet/IP, PROFINET and PROFIBUS.

Click HERE for more information about the Anybus SG Gateways.

Saturday, April 9, 2016

The Complete Content of the IEC 61850 News Blog is now Available as Single PDF Document

For those readers of this IEC 61850, IEC 60870-5/6, DNP3, … news blog that want to get the complete content as a single pdf document, it is just a click away … it contains 1120+ posts from 2008 until 2016-04-09. Once you have downloaded the file you can easily browse the content … search … mark … copy … You will find useful information about the standards, vendors like ABB, HMS, Siemens, or utilities …

Click HERE to download all posts of the IEC 61850 blog in a single pdf [14 MB, 823 pages DIN A4]

Enjoy!

In case you have a question, drop us an EMAIL.

Check the Latest in IEC 61850 Testing Tools during the IEC IEEE PES T&D in Dallas (TX)

Mingle at the GridEx® Smart Grid Product Release- IEEE T&D 2016

FMTP (Sweden) welcomes YOU to meet with their experts in the casual atmosphere of the Rustic (just a few miles away from IEEE PES T&D in Huston (TX)) for food, drinks and the reveal of FMTP Power latest product GridEx® on Wednesday, May 4, 2016, at 8:00 p.m.

GridEx®, a digital multimeter for Smart Grids, bridges the gap between traditional power technology and new digital communication (models, GOOSE, Sampled Values, SCL, ...). Complex data is translated into easily understandable information to support decisions for increased reliability and improved system utilization.

Click HERE to register for the product presentation of GridEx®.

Friday, April 8, 2016

New Draft IEC TR 61850-7-500 Just Published - Typical Use Cases

IEC TC 57 has just published a very interesting document (75+ page Draft Report) - 57/1701/DC:
IEC TR 61850-7-500 – Use of logical nodes for modelling applications and related concepts and guidelines for substations

The draft provides examples and hints on how to use IEC 61850 for substation automation, protection and SCADA. Sample excerpt of content:


This document is crucial to understand use cases of the standard for substation applications.
Note that the examples given are showing just some possible applications. In practice there will be other use cases - depending on the philosophy of a specific utility. The use cases are not standardized!
In case a utility is looking for exchangeability of IEDs from different vendors, it has to specify the SCD file to a very high degree!
Recently I had a meeting with experts from a big transmission utility: They have reached a level of system specification in order to allow interoperability AND exchangeability of IEDs from multiple vendors! To get there: You need to request something more than just "IEC 61850".

Thursday, April 7, 2016

Government R&D Funding for German "Energiewende": 400 Million Euro until 2025

The German government has decided recently to fund four (4) huge R&D Energiewende-Projects!
The government published a news report describing the objectives of the Kopernikus projects.
More than 1000 organizations came up with 41 project proposals - four (4) proposals have been awarded to get the funding!


  1. Neue Netzstrukturen (new network structures) - Project name: ENSURE.
    Leading organization: KIT (Karlsruher Institut für Technologie)
    Other main organizations: RWTH Aachen, E.ON, Tennet, Siemens and ABB
    Number of partners: 21
  2. Speicherung von Überschussstrom (power storage) - Project name: Power-to-X
    Leading organization: RWTH Aachen
    Other main organization: Forschungszentrum Jülich und die DECHEMA
    Number of partners:62
  3. Industrieprozesse (industrial processes): - Project name: SynErgie
    Leading organization: Technischen Universität Darmstadt
    Other main organizations: Universität Stuttgart
    Number of partners: 83
  4. Systemintegration (system integration) - Project name: ENavi
    Leading organization: Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) Potsdam
    Other main organizations:
    Number of partners: 64

The projects are organized into three (3) phases and run until 2025.
Funding for the first phase (2016-2018) = 120 Million Euro.
Funding for the phase 2 and 3 (2019-2015) = 280 Million Euro.

Click HERE for the government press release [de].
Click HERE for the Kopernikus projects [de].

Again On Security - A Summary for Managers

Always everything has been said on industrial control system (ICS) security - but still a lot of managers have not paid enough attention to it.
Are you a manager responsible for ICS security? You should read the one page well written memo. If you are not a manager: forward the link to your management.
Click HERE for the one page well written memo.

Two of the most crucial sentences in the memo are:

"... everyone knows there is a problem - but for the moment it is largely a potential problem."

" ... warns, "My biggest fear right now is that someone will put a critical infrastructure on
lockdown with ransomware. ..."

The next problem may be just round the corner ... somebody saying: "Stehen bleiben und Geld her!" (Stand and deliver!).

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Just Published: CDV IEC 62351-7 -- Network and System Management (NSM) Data Object Models

IEC TC 57 has just published the first CDV of
IEC 62351-7 comprising 208 pages:
Power systems management and associated information exchange - Data and communications security - Part 7: Network and system management (NSM) data object models
The ballot closes 2016-06-17
This draft STANDARD will (when released) supersede the Technical Specification "IEC TS 62351-7:2010".

The NSM objects will provide monitoring data for TC57 protocols used for power systems
(IEC 61850, IEC 60870-5-104) and device specific environmental and security status. Also
IEEE 1815 DNP3 is included in the list of monitored protocols. The NSM data objects use the
naming conventions developed for IEC 61850, expanded to address NSM issues. For sake of
generality these data objects, and the data types of which they are comprised, are defined as
abstract models of data objects.
In order to allow the integration of the monitoring of power system devices within the NSM
environment in this standard a mapping of objects towards the SNMP protocol is provided.

110 pages contain the SNMP MIB Mapping.
Excerpt of some objects related to MMS:

Please take some time to comment.
The document should be available online for comments by end of this week or so.
Check HERE.

IEC 61850 for CLS -- Seems to be the natural solution as discussed in Germany

Controllable Local Systems (CLS) is understood by many experts as a useful tool to communicate with loads and generators. The roll-out of smart meters seems to be blocked (at least in Germany to some extent) by the missing decision: Which information and information exchange standard should be used?
The latest issue of the famous VDI-Nachrichten reported last week Friday that there is an immediate need to come to a decision in Germany. Professor Hilscher (Hochschule Ulm) is suggesting to apply IEC 61850.
Click HERE for the report (Digitale Energiewende braucht Standards) [de].