IEC 61850 covers applications inside substations AND beyond substations

IEC 61850 is applicable for general automation applications as well as for electric power delivery systems. The following lists give an impression of what kind of domains are taken into account so far ... more to come:

Information models and exchange for

• real-time and near real-time applications  (pub/sub: GOOSE, Sampled Values)
• protection
• monitoring, supervision, and control (client/server TCP/IP and WebSocket)
• substation and feeder equipment
• substation-to-substation
• substation-to-control centre
• power plant-to-control centre
• distributed generation
• distributed energy resources
• micro grids
• metering
• power quality
• condition monitoring
• hydro, steam, gas power plants
• wind generation plants
• data centers
• …

System Configuration and engineering

• System Configuration Language (SCL)
• Basic Application Profiles
• top-down-engineering (model-based engineering)
• - …

These lists demonstrate that the standard series IEC 61850 covers applications inside substations AND beyond substations. One crucial question remains: What are the logical nodes and data objects ... from which parts of the standard series IEC 61850 are required for a specific application domain?
The answer is here: ask me.

HERE you can find a sample model for an IEC 61850 Profile for Distributed Energy Resources Supporting IEEE 1547 [pdf] ... quite interesting ...

You may search the web for MICS (IEC 61850 model implementation conformance Statement) ... 

Note that substations are very crucial components of the interconnected electric energy systems.

Let me know if you need some help.

New Edition published: IEC 61850-7-410 for Hydroelectric Power Plants, Steam and Gas Turbines

The new edition of IEC 61850-7-410 has been published (this is Edition 3.0):

Communication networks and systems for power utility automation - Part 7-410: Basic communication structure - Hydroelectric power plants, steam and gas turbines - Logical node classes

IEC 61850-7-410:2026 specifies the logical node classes for use in the domain of hydroelectric power stations, steam and gas turbines. 

Read more details and access a sample HERE.

The standard defines a huge number of details ... excerpt of one group of LNs: 

Logical nodes for primary equipment

The IEC_61850-7-410.NSD.2024A3 light code component can be downloaded HERE. The light code components (XML) lists all logical nodes and data objects, for example:

LN: Penstock burst protection Name: KPBP

Unfortunately the semantic of the "names" are only available in the full code component ... comes with the the standard ... for sale.

Trick: The names and brief description for the logical nodes come with the sample (as shown above).

Final Vote on IEC 61850-7-410 (Hydroelectric Power Plants ) is Positive

The edition 3 of the standard IEC 61850-7-410 has been accepted to be published in April 2026:

Communication networks and systems for power utility automation –
Part 7-410: Basic communication structure –
Hydroelectric power plants – Communication for monitoring and control

The document is very detailed and comprehensive: almost 700 pages!

IEC has published a short news on the new document.

Congratulation to the WG 18 of IEC TC 57!

The document is an integral part of the IEC 61850 standards series. Unlike the standard for Wind Power Plants (IEC 61400-25): which is partly an independent standard series. The latest draft for the information model for wind turbine applications (Edition 3) is harmonized with IEC 61850!