IEC 61850: Realtime Interface Version 2.0 - Why This Matters

Netbeheer (the Netherlands organization of Distribution System Operator) published the Realtime Interface version 1.0 (RTI 1) in 2024.

The revised specification (named RTI 2) has been developed last year and proposed to IEC TC 57 as an additional solution for communication of IEC 61850 information (New Work Item Proposal IEC 61850-8-3).

The one page list of good reasons for the new solution 

The combination of IEC 61850 data model / services and WebSocket protocol
Why this matters

can be found here.

See also:
https://blog.nettedautomation.com/2025/12/long-awaited-christmas-gift-for-smarter.html

40 Years Ago I Started Contributing To The MAP/MMS Standardization In Detroit (MI)

I have contributed to the MAP/MMS Standardization (Manufacturing Automation Protocols/Manufacturing Message Specification) from the very beginning. I was working for Siemens in the group dealing with communication solutions for process control and factory automation. In February 1985 I attended the first time a meeting of the MAP project at the GM TechCenter in Warren (Michigan, USA). As you can see, the first day was a very cold day (1985-02-14) with a lot of fresh snow:

I looked still young (40 years younger than today) ... 32 years old and father of four children.

The approach of MAP/MMS was very new ... even today a lot of people have difficulties with MMS ... especially because of using ASN.1 BER as the encoding notation for all messages exchanged according to IEC 61850 - Client/Server and Publisher/Subscriber messages!!

In 1993 I got also involved in the new IEC TC 57 project TASE.2 (Telecontrol Application Service Element 2) based on MMS ... called ICCP (Intercontrol Center Communication Protocol):

I attended the following meeting in Loveland (Colorado, USA):

30 years ago (March 1995) the IEC TC 57 decided to start a new project: IEC 61850 based on the EPRI UCA 2.0 Specification ... also using MMS/ASN.1/BER ... I got involved in UCA and IEC 61850 starting with the second IEC TC 57 WG 10 meeting end of 1995.

Many people in the electrical power world have complained since then that MMS/ASN.1/BER is toooo ... too much of ... and as a result many have departed from the approach.

I have suggested many times to use web services ... JSON encoding instead of ASN.1/BER and XML ... most people ignored the use of web services ... I guess it will come in the near future.

In many of the following standardization groups I have supported modern communication approaches ... in some cases it took some time ... or still is awaiting for a push:

IEC 62541 (OPC Unified Architecture) - 3 Additional CDVs published for commenting

IEC TC 65E just published 3 additional Committee Drafts for Vote (CDV) for commenting and voting ... also for public comments!

CDVs for circulation on 2024-02-02 also available in Public Commenting application: (https://www.iec.ch/how-get-involved/public-commenting)

Here are the CDV documents published (official voting period closes April 26, 2024):

IEC 62541-3 ED4: OPC Unified Architecture - Part 3: Address Space Model

IEC 62541-5 ED4: OPC Unified Architecture - Part 5: Information Model

IEC 62541-6 ED4: OPC Unified Architecture - Part 6: Mappings

See also the other 21 CDVs out for comments.

Be aware that these documents are the basis to define domain specific information models like in IEC 61850: MMXU.PhV.phsA for voltage of phase A (L1) in a three phase AC power system or MMXU.Hz for representing the frequency ... 

I guess that a lot of the definitions published in the 24 CDVs will not be implemented in all devices and only a subset of the implemented definitions may be used.

After some 40 years involved in the IEC TC 65 (1982 - 2001), TC 57 (2002 - today), IEC TC 88 (2001 - today), and ISO TC 184 SC5 WG2 (MMS, 1984 - 2000) I am increasingly convinced that IEC 61850 has a lot of advantages compared to other standards ...

IEC 61850 Applications in Germany - DKE Documents Online for Free Download

The German National Committee of IEC TC 57 (DKE K 952) has many members of various Working Groups (in the national as well as in the international groups) that discussed the IEC 61850 standard series in general and particularly how the standards could be applied to substation automation and protection. One of the key issues is the modelling and configuration using SCL.

Several documents in German and in English are available:



Click HERE for the link to the above page.

Enjoy the documents.

IEC TC 57 and WG 10 in Figures

IEC TC 57 Working Group 10 "Power system IED communication and associated data models" met last week in Geneva (Switzerland) at the IEC central office.
Mr. Charles Jacquemart (IEC Technical Officer) presented some very interesting figures about the TC 57 and especially WG 10. The following slides are published here with the permission of Mr. Jacquemart.

TC 57 History:


Crucial Publications:






Various TC 57 Working Groups (250 members in WG 10!!):



IEC TC 57 WG 10 is the LARGEST WG in the whole IEC!!



Sales of IEC 61850 standards:



You are right, IEC 61850 is one of the most crucial standard series in IEC and also in the market of power systems!
More to come!

German Standardization Roadmap Industrie 4.0 (Version 2)

Several groups within Germany have written a 70+ page Standardization Roadmap Industrie 4.0 (Version 2, Oct 2015). The document lists a lot of topics relevant for standardization related to the future industrial automation. It contains a lot of issues that “should” or “must” be considered in the standardization of the future.

I was a bit surprised that the industrial automation world seems to lack of many basic standards that would support interoperability and inter-workability. Guess the authors have understood that the myriad of fieldbusses seems not to solve the needs for the future automation process – fieldbusses lead to many islands that can not talk together.

The power world has decided already some 20 years ago to build the foundation of interoperable systems based on a well defined huge “dictionary” of semantic terms (the hundreds of logical nodes for almost all power domains).

With IEC 61850 we change from “bits” to “well defined terms and messages”:

All the messages exchanged could be based on a well standardized semantic, like the temperature supervision model “STMP”: Trip =  “STMP1.Trip.stVal” or the current temperature = “STMP1.Tmp.mag.i”.

The various layers are shown in the following figure:

These values can be reported by a DataSet and a GOOSE message (in real-time … in some 3 to 5 msec):

The smart grid efforts within IEC are tremendously supported by IEC TC 57 … especially with the standards series IEC 61850. This series is part of the “IEC smart grid standards roadmap”.

This roadmap has really attracted the Industrie 4.0 supporters! They write in their roadmap:

“Empfehlung, eine Normenlandkarte (standardisation map) für Industrie 4.0/Smart manufacturing elektronisch zu beschreiben. Die Normenlandkarte wird ein im Vergleich zum Smart Grid Mapping Tool (http://smartgridstandardsmap.com) äquivalentes elektronisches Werkzeug darstellen.”

They recommend to “copy” the “IEC smart grid standards roadmap” and name it “IEC Industry 4.0 / Smart Manufacturing Roadmap).

Click HERE to see the IEC smart grid standards roadmap.

Click HERE to access the Standardization Roadmap Industrie 4.0 (Version 2, Oct 2015, German only).

I hope that they will “copy” more than just a roadmap … refer to IEC 61850 some time down the road.

By the way: HMS is bridging the semantic-less fieldbusses to the semantic defined in IEC 61850 …

http://www.hms-networks.com/about/labs/smart-grid/labline-sg