Why Do You Need a Pocket Lamp for a Smart Meter?

The other day I was really surprised reading a letter to the editor of our local newspaper here in Karlsruhe. The Writer reported that he had to use a pocket lamp and morse code for a PIN to activate the screen of a smart meter. The DSO had told him the benefits of this ... nobody else can see the metered values ;-) ... and the meter is protected from outside ... because it is not connected to any communication medium ... OK. He summarized in stating that the meter is not smart - but it is a Smart Business Case for somebody.

I searched for "smart meter taschenlampe" and got several hits. Here is one ... in German language ... but you will understand it. Enjoy!

Click HERE for a nice video demonstrating how to use a pocket lamp to communicate with the Human Machine Interface of a modern smart electric meter.

What do you think? How much would you pay for this Smart Meter? ... 20 Euro/year!

Configuration Description Language for Extensions for Human Machine Interfaces

IEC TC 57 just published a very interesting committee draft for machine support of automatic mapping the SCL models to HMIs:

IEC 61850 (57/1984/CD):
Communication networks and systems for power utility automation –
Part 6-2: Configuration description language for extensions for human machine interfaces

Closing date for comments: 2018-06-01 

"This International Standard describes how the graphical components and their interactions
found within HMI applications are to be described using the Graphical Configuration
Language (GCL) and the HMI Configuration Language (HCL). It will describe how the
graphical elements – described in GCL – are to be bounded to the IEC 61850 elements
defined by IEC 61850’s System Configuration Language (SCL). ..."

The following excerpt from the CD gives an impression on how the HMI configuration is intended to be automatically derived (supported) by a new graphical configuration namespace:



Wow, this is really a major step forward!

New Work Proposal for Extending the System Configuration Language (SCL) for HMIs

IEC TC 57 has published (57/1767/NP) a proposal for extending the System Configuration Language (SCL) to provide high-level direction in terms of how best to bind the HMI graphical objects with the IEC 61850 data objects/attributes using the configuration description language defined in IEC 61850-6. It builds upon the existing System Configuration Language (SCL) defined in IEC 61850-6, in addition to possibly incorporating other non-IEC namespaces such as the W3C's Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) namespace.

Communication networks and systems for power utility automation - Part 6xx: Configuration description language for communication in power utility automation systems related to Human Machine Interfaces (proposed IEC 61850-6xx)

This work will definitely helping to simplify the graphical representation of DataTypeTemplates in IEC 61850-6 (SCL).


A SCL DataTypeTemplate for a temperature measurement "STMP_0" could be bound to a graphical representation.

The depicted LNType has five related DataObjects. The temperature curve could be shown at an HMI as implemented in the client (HMI) interface of the VHPready demo. The VHPready demo could be downloaded. Click HERE for the access.
The client application of the demo is programmed in C#. A graphical template could be programmed ... if you need it. We could offer such a template if you are interested.