UPDATE 2020-11-10: Crucial Frequency Deviation Of The European Electrical Interconnected Grid (UCTE)

 Please find another frequency deviation detected on 2020-11-10

Message time : 10.11.2020 06:00:52 MEZ
Message : UCTE high frequency
Mains frequency : 50,135 Hz
Mains load difference : 1916,6 MW

UPDATE late 2020-11-05: Crucial Frequency Deviation Of The European Electrical Interconnected Grid (UCTE)

 Please find another frequency deviation detected on late 2020-11-05

Message time : 05.11.2020 20:01:28 MEZ
Message : UCTE low frequency
Mains frequency : 49,889 Hz
Mains load difference : -1548,7 MW

UPDATE 2020-11-05: Crucial Frequency Deviation Of The European Electrical Interconnected Grid (UCTE)

Please find another frequency deviation detected on 2020-11-05

Message time : 05.11.2020 06:01:36 MEZ
Message : UCTE high frequency
Mains frequency : 50,122 Hz
Mains load difference : 1717,4 MW

UPDATE 2020-11-03: Crucial Frequency Deviation Of The European Electrical Interconnected Grid (UCTE)

 Please find another frequency deviation detected on 2020-11-02.

Message time : 02.11.2020 21:01:14 MEZ
Message : UCTE low frequency
Mains frequency : 49,896 Hz
Mains load difference : -1441,3 MW

Crucial Frequency Deviation Of The European Electrical Interconnected Grid (UCTE)

The frequency of the European Interconnected Electrical Grid (UCTE) is under stress. The frequency should be 50 Hz ... as you know. Click HERE for an UCTE background paper. Click HERE for details and basics of the Nordic Grid.

The network frequency is uniform in a power supply network and, apart from minor deviations from the nominal value, constant over time. The frequency changed today and earlier more than what usually is expected.

Here is some information about todays situation at 11:00 a.m.:

Time : 21.10.2020 11:02:35 MESZ
Message : UCTE low frequency
Mains frequency : 49,886 Hz
Mains load difference : -1594,6 MW

UPDATE 2020-11-03
Message time : 02.11.2020 21:01:14 MEZ
Message : UCTE low frequency
Mains frequency : 49,896 Hz
Mains load difference : -1441,3 MW

UPDATE 2020-11-05

Message time : 05.11.2020 06:01:36 MEZ
Message : UCTE high frequency
Mains frequency : 50,122 Hz
Mains load difference : 1717,4 MW

UPDATE 2020-11-05/2

Message time : 05.11.2020 20:01:28 MEZ
Message : UCTE low frequency
Mains frequency : 49,889 Hz
Mains load difference : -1548,7 MW

UPDATE 2020-11-10

Message time : 10.11.2020 06:00:52 MEZ
Message : UCTE high frequency
Mains frequency : 50,135 Hz
Mains load difference : 1916,6 MW

-------------------------------------------------

A look at the following private website (offered by an experienced senior electrical engineer) provides very informative and easy to use information (right part on the figure):

www.pc-projekte.de (the content can easily be translated - with Google)

You may register to receive messages like the one above:

https://pc-projekte.lima-city.de/ucte-netzfrequenz-infodienst.html

Note that these messages carry just privately generated information about specific events of the frequency of the ENTSO-E Network in Continental Europe (former UCTE).

The diagram on the left part is derived from:

https://gridradar.net/netzfrequenz.html

Hope you will find this post informative.

ENTSO-E Just Published a New Update on Activities Related to IEC 61850

ENTSO-E is actively supporting the application of IEC 61850.

They believe that "The IEC 61850 Standard for the design of electrical substation automation addresses many crucial aspects of TSO communications, data modeling and engineering in order to reach seamless interoperability of different vendors’ subsystems within the TSO system management architecture."

ENTSO-E published an Update on their activities related to IEC 61850 in July 2017.

ENTSO-E Ad Hoc Group IEC 61850 continued to intensively work on the improvement of the IEC 61850 standard interoperability on two main domains:

1. At information level (data semantic), the development of the ENTSO-E profile through the Interoperability Specification Tool (ISTool)
2. At engineering level, by consolidating ENTSO-E requirements that have been formalized into a DC (Document for Comment), approved through the IEC National Committees (NC) voting process, and now encapsulated in the action plan of several task forces of the IEC TC 57 WG10

Click HERE for reading the complete the report.

ENTSO-E proposes some Extensions of IEC 61850

IEC TC 57 distributed a proposal from ENTSO-E to add some features to IEC 61850 (57/1771/DC):

Proposed new work items by ENTSO-E to introduce additional specification features of IEC 61850 based systems within SCL

Edition 2 of IEC 61850-4 was published in 2011. Edition 2 of IEC 61850-6 was published in 2009. Ultimately, the proposal by the ENTSO-E statement and example of engineering process, aims to serve the market in order to reach the multi-vendor interoperability of systems in an efficient way.

Crucial Topics are:

1. Input and data flow modelling / Virtual IED - Introduction of additional specification features of IEC 61850 based systems within SCL.
2. System engineering efficiency - Introduction of additional specification and configuration features of IEC 61850 based systems within SCL.
3. Communication Network Description - Introduction of additional specification and configuration features of IEC 61850 based systems within SCL.

Please note that big utilities (in Europe ...) have already used SCL to specify the details they want vendors to implement. The time where vendors could model the automation system the way they like it most seems to be over soon. Utilities start to understand that even interchangeability is the ultimate goal!!

It all depends on the willingness to cooperate!

Teamwork makes the dream work!

ENTSO-E publishes November 2015 news on IEC 61850

ENTSO-E seems to be quite happy with:

1. the level of interoperability many different vendors’ subsystems to be applied within the TSO system management architecture.
2. the status of the standardization within IEC TC 57 WG 10, WG 17 and WG 18.

ENTSO-E just published a brief report on the

IOP 2015, organized by UCA International User Group (Iug) in Brussels, Hotel Crowne Plaza, 26.9-2.10

IEC TC57 WG10(-17-18) meetings, hosted by and at ENTSO-E premises, Brussels , 5.-9.10.

Click HERE to read the summary on the two events.

IEC 61850 Interoperability Test in Brussels Was a Big Success

The IEC 61850 Interoperability Test in Brussels (Belgium, at ENTSO-E) last week was a big success. The plenary meeting of the IEC TC 57 WG 10, 17 and 18 was informed about the results on Monday, October 05, 2015.

Compared to the previous IOPs in 2011 and 2013 there were more companies attending in 2015: 19/43/49. Total number of vendors that provided products to test was: 14/20/29. The number of people participating grew from 37/93 to 130 !!

Tests covered: SCL, Client/Server, GOOSE, SV, HSR/PRP, and IEEE 1588

For Client/Server 15 issues were found in 2013, in 2015 just 4. No issue was found on GOOSE.

A total of 32 issues need some attention. The issues will be posted to the tissue database if required.

The first tissues have already been posted:

http://tissue.iec61850.com/tissue.mspx?issueid=1445

http://tissue.iec61850.com/tissue.mspx?issueid=1446

http://tissue.iec61850.com/tissue.mspx?issueid=1447

http://tissue.iec61850.com/tissue.mspx?issueid=1448

The IOP at ENTSO-E has shown that IEC 61850 standard parts and products are very stable … there is no need to wait for applying IEC 61850.

ENTSO-E Strongly Supports IEC 61850 for Substation Automation

ENTSO-E (European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity) wants to become “an important stakeholder in the IEC 61850 improvement process and will actively contribute, mainly through the profiling work of the IEC 61850 standard.”

ENTSO-E has just published an update on their current and future support of IEC 61850.

I very much appreciate the efforts of the European Transmission System Operators!

Click HERE for the latest news.

The electrical power delivery system is composed of many other domains that are beyond the substations in transmission systems:

• Conventional Power Generation
• Wind Power Plants
• Hydro Power Plants
• Distribution systems
• Renewable Energy Resources
• Load centers (like factories, petro chemical plant, …)
• Power quality monitoring
• Virtual Power Plants
• Primary, secondary, and tertiary control
• Load shedding
• …

IEC 61850 is about to be used in all of these application domains – to become a Seamless Information Exchange System.

Many pilot implementations and tests are underway in these domains. Usually using proprietary Information Exchange System, because the main objectives of these projects are mainly related to power system dynamics and stability – one way or the other. Later they figure out: Hey, we have a very successful project … but created many proprietary, non-interoperable Information Exchange Systems.

It is highly recommended to use IEC 61850 from the scratch! Because this is THE standard. There is usually no need to spend money and time to develop something specific for one use case.

On my radar screen I see many people starting to use IEC 61850 – users and vendors … and system integrators. All over.

Resume: ENTSO-E is just ONE of MANY efforts to apply IEC 61850.

ENTSO-E: IEC 61850 in Transport Systems for Electric Power is making good progress

The original scope of IEC 61850 in the late 90’s of the last century was “high voltage substations”. Utilities in the domain HV systems did participate in the beginning of the standardization and later-on showed-up seldom – untile recently. After realizing crucial issues in the inter-operation of devices and tools the ENTSO-E started to support the idea of IEC 61850 interoperability in HV substations.

The latest update on these efforts are documented on the ENTSO-E Website.

Click HERE to follow the update.

You will find many interesting topics discussed and useful links to other activities and opportunities to learn more about the success of IEC 61850. There are links to the special event during the IEC 61850 Europe Conference 2014 in Prague; and a link to the event: http://www.iec61850-europe.com/

The last slide presented at the ENTSO-E AhG IEC 61850 @ UCA Booth, Cigré 2014 is remarkable. It shows somebody who seems to have severe headaches:

Is this You!? I have seen many people that throw up their hands in despair.

You are not alone! We are here to help you: Training for all experts involved in high voltage substations by really experienced protection and communication experts:

FMTP and NettedAutomation offer special IEC 61850 training for PROTECTION and SCADA applications.

First day of DistribuTECH in San Diego

This year’s DistribuTECH exhibition seems to have a lot more booths than before. The huge hall has 34 rows full of large and small booths. When you walk the floor you see many products that provide IEC 61850 connectivity.

A lot of people I spoke to are in the process of developing IEC 61850 connectivity or are planning to do so in the near future.

The UCAIUG booth 1648 was visited by may people from all over:

The annual meeting of the UCAIUG IEC 61850 group focused on testing. The experiences show that IEC 61850 conformance tests are an absolute must for IEDs that claim to be conformant. But: The focus on testing will definitely move towards interoperability testing.

TÜV SÜD reported about their experience with testing. They are a strong supporter of interoperability testing. TÜV SÜD could play a major role in defining the needed requirements and rules and they could be a major organization to setting up test facilities.

ENTSO-E’s activity to get involved in the quality improvement process of the standard and conformant products is welcome throughout the industry.

ENTSO-E has published a Research and Development Roadmap for the next 20 … 30 years. Communication infrastructure is one of the key elements in the future power delivery system.

Download the Roadmap. [pdf, 1.7 MB]

ENTSO-E: European Utilities are Coming Back Onboard of IEC 61850 Standardization Work

Congratulation to the experts of the ENTSO-E that have figured out (and convinced their management!!) that it is a good idea to get – again (!!!) – involved in the international standardization and implementation of IEC 61850!!! Welcome back (home)!

The standardization work is going on for some 17 years these days. The vendors have dominated the standardization work so far – it is great to see utilities to come back (home) in order to reach a balance between benefits for users and vendors.

See a description of the situation in 2007 with the title:

Do users really get what they expect?
Do they get interoperable IEDs and tools?
What about multi-vendor projects?

Many utilities all over have understood the benefit of the standards – but are still waiting to harvest the fruits. I am confident that the situation is much better than what people write in some public statements.

I am conducting a three day training here in Frankfurt (Germany) … with many attendees from users!! … attendees from BIG utilities in Asia, New Zealand, Africa, and Northern Europe! More to come!

Don’t worry! We are still at the very beginning of the journey to IC 61850 based information exchange!

Read the new publications from ENTSO-E on interoperability issues in IEC 61850.

ENTSO-E is back on the track to a bright “interoperable” future!

Again: Congratulation for coming back home! I would appreciate to meeting with the ENTSO-E expert(s) during the next IEC TC 57 WG 10 meeting in Texas end of October 2012 – (un)fortunately I have to travel to Australia next week (for 10 days) and then to the U.S. to helping experts in implementing IEC 61850!

I look forward to meeting more “ENTSO-E” experts at one of my next training courses in South Africa, U.S. or Europe.

IEC 61850 – As seen by The Very Large Power Grid Operators (VLPGO)

IEC 61850 defines several aspects on how devices interoperate and how the interoperation is engineered and guaranteed to run in multiple vendor projects. Earlier this year we have seen a public statement by ENTSO-E on the use of IEC 61850 compliant devices and tools.

Another huge organization has added to the ENTSO-E statement: The Very Large Power Grid Operators (VLPGO). The “association of the 16 largest Power Grid Operators serving more than 70% of the electricity demand in the world and providing electricity to 3 billion consumers”.

I guess this is true – then I would expect that these 16 power grid operators could easily “control” what vendors have to deliver – deliver IEC 61850 compliant solutions that meet the needs of these companies!! And they could have an appropriate influence on the standardization work.

Download the VLPGO statement on IEC 61850.

Instead of purchasing what they really want and need, they complain about the standardization groups: that the standardization organizations “should from the PGO perspective be more directive within the standard.

They should not allow different suppliers
to implement standards differently.

In particular, a strong standardization degree at the interfaces between tools (vendor specific or third-party) is required. Moreover, stability, or at least backward compatibility of the standard should be guaranteed. … Consequently, we would like to strongly suggest to all IEC61850 stakeholders to take the appropriate actions in order to ensure the success of IEC61850 and to make sure the standard – and the technologies developed around it – remain sustainable and provide significant benefits for all stakeholders and the community.”

I am wondering that (obviously) the few utilities that deliver 70% of the electric demand have an interesting view on what the IEC TC 57 (and other groups) could manage and gain.

IEC COULD NOT control what and how vendors implement
and what users use!!

This could (more or less) easily be controlled by the user communities: by just purchasing products that meet the users’ requirements only. Why did the many utilities purchase automation systems that did – to some degree – not meet their requirements? Were they not precisely specified or did they not understand how to write the specifications? Or? My experience is that in many cases the technical people of utilities had not been involved in purchasing IEC 61850 based systems! Several utilities hired me for a training of their engineers AFTER they the vendors commissioned the systems. Engineers told me that they were responsible for the service and maintenance of the systems – having NO CLUE what IEC 61850 is!!

Engineers of a well known group of large utilities in Europe told me some two years ago that they were not allowed to conduct lab tests or build pilot projects … in one case a utility expert told me that they had to stop their special group of experts on IEC 61850 to get prepared for the new technology – instead their management believed that the vendors do all things right.

There is a saying: “Pay now or pay later”. From the perspective of the years 2000-2002 utilities refused to “pay” for the standardization and for “controlling” the implementation into products. They have decided to “pay” later: 2012, 2013, … I look forward to see them paying.

Back to the standardization: IEC standardization work is a democratic process and: the work is done by people attending the meetings and contributing to the technical work. If the user communities would have been shown up more often and contributed to the technical to a higher degree, then we would not see these statements flying around today. The users (especially the 16 BIG ONES in the VLPGO) should GET INVOLVED (by letting their experts getting more deeply involved or by providing resources for people that are already involved …) instead of “strongly suggest to all IEC61850 stakeholders to take the appropriate actions in order to ensure the success of IEC61850 and to make sure …”.

I would have expected a statement like this: “VLPGO member companies offer increased and appropriate resources (many more experts getting involved and funding Millions of Dollar or Euro for common activities) in order to ensure the success of IEC61850 and to make sure …”. The VLPGO member companies – somehow – have to provide more resources than it was the case in the last 10 years or so.

It is time to educate more people from the many stakeholders to understand how IEC standards are defined and what it means to have a standard published. The standardization groups can lead the horse to the water – but they cannot make the horse drink the water!

Vendors, users, system integrators, and consultants should work more closely together to make sure that everybody gets a benefit from the standard. One possibility to support this goal could be to set-up a European Users Group for IEC 61850! This group could be a subsidiary of the UCAIUG – it would be easier (especially for utility experts) to travel within Europe than across the Atlantic. By the way, the UCAIUG is – from my point of view – more a Vendors Group!

Finally: The vendors have spent a lot of time and money in defining the standards and to implement them!!! Thanks a lot for their engagement! Keep going!

NettedAutomations IEC 61850 Training Modules and Experience

Please find a comprehensive description of training services provided by NettedAutomation including a list of training sessions (past events) and modules of training topics:

Training on IEC 61850 offered by NettedAutomation [pdf, 2.6 MB].

In addition to the theory of the standards it is the huge experience collected during 10 years of comprehensive training that makes the courses unparalleled.

The next public training is scheduled for Frankfurt (Germany) on October, 17-19, 2012

I hope to see several utility experts there, see ENTSO-E statement on IEC 61850 and their complaint about the situation in High Voltage substations. Seats and a discount fee are available.

ENTSO-E statement on the IEC61850 standard

ENTSO-E representing 41 TSOs from 34 European countries has published earlier in 2012 a statement on IEC 61850 for the application in European Transmission Systems. The statement criticizes that the level of interoperability expected by the utilities has not yet been implemented by the vendors.

This is also my personal experience speaking to hundreds of utility experts all over. What happened? How can it be overcome?

The main reason for some challenges in getting a higher degree of interoperability is that the same utilities (from the 41 in ENTSO-E) that are now complaining DID NOT get enough involved in the standardization process AND NOT in the process of implementation and first pilot tests. The feedback (needed in such comprehensive standards) was very weak.

I was personally seriously impacted by the changes in the utility industry some 10 years ago: The industry has funded my (and other peoples) involvement in the standardization work until 2002 – to help to make sure that the utilities’ requirements got implemented in the standards!! For the next 10 (crucial!) years after 2002 almost NO UTILITY expert showed up or was seriously involved. The vendors were finishing the standards without the “control” of the utility industry. AND: The first implementations and projects were not really watched and commented by the utility experts. The vendors still are preferably implementing turn-key substations often WITHOUT utility experts involved! Utility people usually have very little understanding what IEC 61850 means.

On one side it is unfair to not really showing up and not getting sufficiently involved in the process for the last 10 years and then – when some minor issues are still not solved – complain that the TSO’s requirements have not been fully met! Several experts have tried some 10 years ago to convince several CEOs of big utilities to continue funding the standardization work! We did not have any chance!

By the way – the good sign is now that the ENTSO-E TSOs WOKE UP! Hope that they will get back to become again a serious partner in the international standardization and in the implementation and application of the standards.

Download the ENTSO-E statement on IEC 61850

In the meantime many other domain have decided to use IEC 61850 – in most cases the interoperability at a very high degree is reached in these applications.

All market stake-holders are invited to get involved – some may first need to get some education to understand that IEC 61850 is more than just another protocol.

The statement refers to EPRI’s UCA development that has cost some 50.000.000 USD !! Where are the European utilities that are willing to spend a reasonable amount of Euros to get the remaining requirements of the TSO implemented in the years to come?!

I look forward to receiving many enquiries for training courses from European TSOs in the years to come ;-)

I have trained many utilities all over to help them to understand the standards, products, tools, and the vendors … often utility experts have NO clue what this is all about!