tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4947745203111651722.post936423489601669373..comments2024-03-05T00:27:49.553-08:00Comments on News on IEC 61850 and related Standards: Substation Automation HandbookKarlheinz Schwarzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14655052638097798754noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4947745203111651722.post-5351060224038444212010-09-10T06:33:55.031-07:002010-09-10T06:33:55.031-07:00Dear people,
I am glad to greet the release of a ...Dear people,<br /><br />I am glad to greet the release of a new edition of this handbook. I have had a look at the pages that you have posted for free browsing, and found the big old point ‘interoperability versus interchangeability’ addressed at the very beginning of the chapter devoted to IEC 61850. <br /><br />I guess this is a somewhat unsettled topic, and it will remain so in the foreseeable future, particularly if IEC 61850 succeeds!<br /><br />IMHO the sometimes-heard statement ‘interoperability does not imply interchangeability’ is not quite correct. For me, it is quite obvious that the more interoperable a device is, the more interchangeable it shall be. Think, for instance, of TV sets. You can watch your favourite broadcast program or DVD recording on set A from vendor X, and then, after a few straightforward repluggings, do the same on set B from vendor Y. Is this not, to say the least, a considerable degree of interchangeability? And is it not a pure consequence of interoperability? <br /><br />You may answer: no! Surely set A will be for you preferable to set B, or viceversa, because of some attributes not related to interoperability, e.g. power consumption or image quality. And I will reply: precisely that is why I say ‘interchangeability’ instead of ‘functional equivalence’! Precisely because set B is, say, better than set A regarding this or that non-interoperability-related feature, do I want to be able to swap them around, and do this in the easiest possible way, not impaired by interoperability issues!<br /><br />That is exactly what we users want: not just be able to have different IEDs from (possibly) different vendors cooperating in our substations, but also be able to replace an IED by another one that is functionally equivalent (or superior, or maybe just similar, this being the utilty’s internal issue) regardless of what the other system components are, and in the easiest possible way. <br /><br />I would not like to finish this post without congratulating and thanking you for your excellent blog, which in a short time has become the prominent information source for the whole IEC 61850 community.<br /><br />Regards,<br />A SAS userAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com