ISA99 - New Working Group "Electric Energy OT Security Profile"

"The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), global equipment suppliers, and other stakeholders announced the establishment of the Electric Energy OT Security Profile working group hosted by the International Society of Automation ISA99 standards committee.

The Electric Energy OT Security Profile will be a cybersecurity work product utilizing the ISA/IEC 62443 series of standards. The final product will be a formal ISA/IEC 62443 application guide, recognized globally as the consensus work product for securing various control systems used in electric energy generation, transmission, and distribution operations.

...

The ISA Electric Energy OT Security Profile working group is seeking participation from industry groups, including the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), the International Council on Large Electric Systems (CIGRE), and other industry stakeholders to ensure consideration of and alignment with other cybersecurity work product development efforts. ... "

Click HERE for the press release.

Holistic Engineering and IEC Standards

One of the most crucial challenges in Electric Power Systems in the future is the fact that multiple aspects like planning, design, configuration, data acquisition, operation, protection, error detection, maintenance, ... security, ... at several layers (process, asset management, ...) are so co-joined with each other and interdependent.

Is this new? No! Some 400 years (!) ago, Rene Descartes was recommending to apply a holistic approach for all sciences ... he did not know the huge interconnected Power systems in Europe, China, USA, ... here is what he has written [extended by myself]:



I highly recommend to educate young people in a way that they get a holistic understanding of the many aspects of the electric power system ... focusing on one or two aspects may cause at the end of the day many problems. The main aspect still is to understand the physics of such a huge system. Any programmer of software impacting the safety of the power delivery system should be educated in physics and especially electrical systems. So, understanding MMS, IEC 61850 or OPC UA is good - BUT engineers should understand the process (electrical system) they are manipulating with some lines of code. Engineers should also be trained thoroughly in the many aspects.

Unfortunately there is quite often little budget for comprehensive training in several aspects. Ask your management for more training - better:more hands-on training!!

IEC 61850 Tissue Data Base - In Operation Under IEC

The IEC 61850 Tissue Data Base is in operation again - now under IEC Logo.

Click HERE for accessing the Data Base:



The registration as a new user will be possible soon.

Enjoy the crucial resources.

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!

Closing 2016 - Greetings from Karlsruhe

As 2016 comes to a close, I say "a hearty Thank You!" for choosing our services, visiting the IEC 61850 blog, and for the great cooperation this year.

I wish you, your family, and the many people around you a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year 2017 … living in peace and harmony.

Hope your home is a safe place to live. Take care.

Please, help to keep the power flowing and the grass green - with the various standards defined by IEC and IEEE.

I look forward to meeting you in 2017 - maybe soon in San Diego (CA) on January 30, 2017.

Please drop us an email if you like this blog or you would like me to post other interesting information on the blog.

Bye for now.

Reminder: Many ISO/IEC Standards Are Publicly Available

ISO and IEC provide free access to many older and newer standards like

ISO/IEC 27000 (Fourth edition 2016-02-15):

Information technology — Security techniques — Information security
management systems — Overview and vocabulary

Click HERE for the above standard ISO/IEC 27000.
Click HERE for the complete list of publicly available standards.

IEC Smart Grid Standards Map

IEC has spent some time to list the relevant standards for the many areas of Smart(er) Grids:

http://smartgridstandardsmap.com/

When you browse this site, you may wonder to see a list of 301 standards and other official specifications. There are many areas that are related to the 50 Hz or 60 Hz 3-phase electrical power systems:

• Advanced distribution management system
• Advanced metering infrastructure
• Asset management and condition monitoring system
• Blackout prevention system
• Clock reference system
• Communication network
• Communication network management system
• Data modelling
• Demand response / Load management
• Distributed energy resources operation system
• Distribution automation system
• E-mobility system
• EMC & Power quality
• Electric Storage system
• Energy management system
• FACTS for grids
• Generation management system
• Industrial automation system
• Market place systems
• Meter-related back-office systems
• Security
• Smart home and building automation system
• Substation automation system
• Weather forecast

The home page states: “Easily and instantly identify the standards that are needed for any part of the Smart Grid – no need to be a standards expert”. Hm, really? There may be no need to be an expert browsing the site – BUT if you are not an expert in standards like IEC 60870-5-10x, CIM, IEC 61400-25, IEC 61850,  IEC 62351, … then you need to talk an EXPERT. We are here to help you!

Fortunately, when it comes to information exchange, the many parts of IEC 61850 are the most crucial standards you will find in the list of the 301 standards:

IEC 61850-6 IEC 61850-7-1  IEC 61850-7-2 IEC 61850-7-3 IEC 61850-7-4 IEC 61850-7-410 IEC 61850-7-420 IEC 61850-8-1 IEC 61850-8-2 IEC 61850-80-1 IEC 61850-80-4 IEC 61850-9-2 IEC 61850-90-1 IEC 61850-90-10

IEC 61850-90-11 IEC 61850-90-12 IEC 61850-90-13 IEC 61850-90-14 IEC 61850-90-15 IEC 61850-90-2 IEC 61850-90-3 IEC 61850-90-4 IEC 61850-90-5 IEC 61850-90-6 IEC 61850-90-7 IEC 61850-90-8 IEC 61850-90-9

I guess, even IEC has not fully understood the impact of IEC 61850 on the power delivery system: So, why is IEC 61850-90-3 missing in the list of standards relevant for cable?

Here is an overview (from draft IEC 61850-90-3) on cable monitoring:

It is impossible to list IEC 61850 in any application domain. The model (LN – Logical Node) STMP (temperature supervision) could be used allover – where ever a temperature is measured. Modeling the temperature in a green house and communication the value with IEC 61850 does not require to list IEC 61850 as a standard for green houses … ;-)

IEC 61850 is a common standard that covers specific and general models and services.

To understand the impact of IEC 61850: you have to be an expert or you have to ask an expert.

Why does Security often have a low priority?

During a conversation with a manager of a vendor of Energy Management Systems (EMS) today, I was surprised hearing that they offered a training course on Security measures in 2013 – but had to cancel the course because of too less registrations! Could that be true in 2013?

Here is some information on security measures easy to read and understand – maybe hard to implement:

Whitepaper
Anforderungen an sichere Steuerungs- und Telekommunikationssysteme

White Paper
Requirements for Secure Control and Telecommunication Systems

Click HERE for the bilingual document [pdf]

There is also a companion document (in German) available that gives further guidelines on how to apply the requirements for control center level systems, for communication infrastructure level, and for substations and RTUs:

“Anforderungen an sichere Steuerungs- und Telekommunkationssysteme
Ausführungshinweise zur Anwendung des BDEW Whitepaper”

These requirements are mandatory for vendors!!

Click HERE for the document [pdf, DE].

Every expert in the energy automation business should read, understand, and apply these requirements.

On page 58 you can read (in German):

“Entsprechend den technischen Möglichkeiten sollten in allen Bereichen standardisierte IEC-Protokolle angewendet werden. Der private Bereich dieser Kommunikationsprotokolle sollte nach Möglichkeit nicht verwendet werden.
Eine Verschlüsselung der Protokolle nach IEC 62351 sollte durch den Betreiber geprüft werden, wobei ggf. auftretende Einschränkungen bei der Fehlerdiagnose sowie die notwendige Infrastruktur und Prozesse zur Schlüsselverwaltung berücksichtigt werden sollten.
Dort, wo aktuelle Systeme und Geräte noch nicht die Möglichkeit der Verschlüsselung nach IEC 62351 bieten, sollte die Fernwirkübertragung daher auf den unterlagerten Netzwerkebenen geschützt werden, z.B. durch Nutzung von VPN-Technologie oder SSL/TLS-Tunnelung.
Insbesondere für IP-basierte Protokolle sollten entsprechend sichere Netzwerkstrukturen vorgesehen werden (siehe 2.3).”

By the way, the whitepaper can be used by English speaking experts to learn German – and vice versa ;-)

A REFRESHER ON THE “STANDARDS CONTINUUM”

Erich Gunther, Aaron Snyder and Grant Gilchrist, EnerNex have published an interesting article in the SGIP Newsletter, Volume 6, June 2014 Issue:

A REFRESHER ON THE “STANDARDS CONTINUUM”

Their Conclusion is right:

“Often misapplied, the term “standard” is truly only applicable in certain situations. The author of this piece advocates reserving the use of “standard” for de jure standards, especially when employed without the "de jure" modifier. There may appear to be little harm in referring to de facto "standards" simply as “standards,” but this actually dilutes and confuses the definition in the manner that the term "engineer" is often misapplied to functions requiring no engineering education or certification. For example, in these cases, it is preferable to use the applicable term of "specification," "requirements" and "requirements specification" instead of "standard."”

Click HERE for the full article.

So far so good. There are other languages that differentiate between “Standard” and “Norm”, like in German. German “DIN Standards” are specifications that are reflecting a document that has been published with lower hurdles than a “Norm”. The “DIN Norm” compares to the de-jure Standard.

The reality is more complex than just to differentiate between de-jure Standards and other documents. The (de-jure) Standards have to be extended in many cases by non-de-jure Standards: e.g., Implementation agreements that can be written by a Two-party (two vendors, one vendor and one user, one vendor and one testlab, …), an Alliance, Users Group, or standardization bodies.

The future power delivery systems will need many combinations of de-jure (Base) Standards and non-de-jure Documents (Implementation agreements, Profiles, … and even Green-Tissues-List as in case of IEC 61850, IEC 61400-25 – these are documents that are refer to de-jure Standards).

In the end of the day, we want to get interoperable devices to build multi-vendor automation systems for the future power delivery system! Or?

In case of IEC 61850 I see a lot of pressure to come up with more “official” Implementation agreements or Profiles that are agreed by more than two parties, two companies, or two experts.

One good example is the VHPReady Industrieforum.
Click HERE for the current Specification 3.0 in English.

This is a good starting point – it’s not yet the final result … to expected early 2015.

IEC Smart Grid Tool now online

The IEC Central Office has published a comprehensive tool to facilitate identification and access to relevant standards for use cases and implementation of Smart Grid. This tool includes links to IEC standards as well as relevant standards from other organizations. The smart grid tool available at http://smartgridstandardsmap.com/ will be useful for all other IEC groups engaged in systems level work.

You will find IEC 61850 all over on that “map” – no surprise.

World Standards Day 2013 – October 14

Did you know that there is a world standards day? I didn’t!

I searched a bit and found a nice web page:

http://www.worldstandardscooperation.org/wsd.html

The results of the World Standards Day 2013 poster competition encouraged me to discuss a bit time and power!

The first price was won by Frederica Scott Vollrath (Germany):

This is really describing what IEC 61850 does: let the power flow through a lot of interrelated gear wheels.

It is one of the most interesting, albeit most challenging aspects of the future power system development because there must be a guarantee that all aspects and tasks of the functions and information sharing services will mesh together like the teeth of gear wheels!!

Well done poster!!

I visited the other day a museum with several of our grand sons (Dynamikum). We saw the following set of 18 gear wheels:

The top wheel is driven by a motor with 250 rpm and 26.5 Watt:

The motor drives the first wheel (large), the first (small) drives the second (large), and so on.

The questions are:

How long does it take until the 18. (last) wheel turns one (1!!) time? How much energy is consumed by the motor during that time?

It takes 3 Million years!!

The motor would consume

26,5 W x 365 x 24 x 3,000,000 h =
7 x 10**2 GWh or
0.7 TWh
WOW

That would cost some 128 Million Euro at 0.2 Euro/kwh …

Without IEC standards it would be much more expensive! Or?

IEC President Wucherer talks about the Electric Future

The new IEC President, Dr Klaus Wucherer talked to the IEC Council recently.

According to the IEC e-tech website (2012-01-28): “Wucherer underlined that as an engineer and industrialist he has been in contact with the IEC in one way or another throughout most of his working life. He contributed to IEC work through his company and the National Committee and was an industry customer for IEC products and services. … Wherever there is electricity, the IEC needs to be involved.” I my opinion: IEC is already deeply involved – many experts have to learn this.

Dr Wucherer was my boss at Siemens Automation and Drives when I started my consultancy business 20 years ago – he was in Nuremberg and I was in Karlsruhe. The reason I became a consultant was this: Dr Wucherer asked me three times to move from Karlsruhe to Nuremberg – I decided to stay in Karlsruhe and work in the standardization as a consultant. Dr Wucherer, colleagues of mine and I were deeply involved in the national, European and international standardization of Fieldbusses and MAP. Dr Wucherer supported the standardization work in the 80s and 90s. We agreed that the future would require true international standards for information exchange.

As a Siemens employee under Dr Wucherer I wrote two remarkable papers on the standardization: one about the future of Fieldbusses and one about MAP in 1991:

Click HERE for the paper “Bridging MAP to Ethernet” [PDF, 720 KB]

Click HERE for the paper “Fieldbus standardization: Another way to go” [PDF, 720 KB].

I would extend his statement “Wherever there is electricity, the IEC needs to be involved” to

Wherever there is electricity, the IEC 61850 needs to be involved!

Click HERE for some crucial information models for the electricity defined in IEC 61850-7-4 that demonstrate the importance of the above extended statement.

The “electricity world” is likely to prevent the proliferation found in the industrial automation domain’s fieldbusses. If the many fieldbus consortia define their fieldbus specific profiles for the electric world then we will get as many information models as fieldbusses! Or?

Click HERE to see bunch of 60+ fieldbusses in ONE IEC standard in 2008: The IEC 61158.

Substation Automation Specialist Wanted in the U.S. – IEC 61850 is a MUST

Siemens offers an open position for a Product Management Specialist for Substation Automation. One of the position requirements is “Must have worked with advanced digital Substation Automation using IEC 61850 protocol and functionalities”

Click HERE for the description.

President of German Federal Network Agency recommends IEC Standards for Smart Grids

Matthias Kurth, President of the German Federal Network Agency, is very supportive of IEC standards. In a short video he stated that "IEC can help put the innovative potential of industry on the right track so that we don't have island solutions: proprietary solutions that can hinder the growth of the market".

IEC can, according to Mr. Kurth, "help us to bring the different industry players together on common platforms which are transparent, open, and which are the basis of the individual innovation ... we need not to wait to renovate our own infrastructure [editor: meant is the energy sector] in Europe."

Click HERE to read the report and watch the video posted at the IEC website.

IEC has listed the crucial standards for Smart Grids in an Excel table. IEC 61850 seems to be understood as THE most crucial standard series for Smart Grids.

Click HERE for the Excel table.
Click HERE for the Smart Grid page.

Mr. Kurth is right in requesting open standards as basis of innovation. The key innovations in the energy market needed will be the many SMART applications that keep the energy supply at a high level of availability - IEC 61850 and other IEC standards can help to support this objective! The easier it is to USE these standards the faster we can reach smart(er) applications.

One innovation is the simple IEC 61850 API developed by SystemCorp (Perth, Australia). The API can be used by application programmers immediately to develop SMART innovations for the energy market.

IEC Goes Twitter

IEC uses the latest communication channel: Twitter !!

Click HERE for visiting IEC on Twitter.

Die IEC 61850 – ein Kernstandard des zukünftigen Smart Grids

Am 15. und 16. April 2010 findet im Kloster Eberbach bei Wiesbaden ein Expertenforum zum Thema "Die IEC 61850 – ein Kernstandard des zukünftigen Smart Grids" statt. Namhafte Experten werden sowohl wesentliche Aspekte der Normenreihe vorstellen als auch in einem Dialog führen mit betroffenen verantwortlichen Vorstände und Geschäftsführer sowie leitenden Mitarbeiter und Entscheidungsträger der technischen und IT-Abteilungen von Energieversorgungsunternehmen, Netzbetreibern in öffentlichen und innerbetrieblichen Verteilnetzen und Betreibergesellschaften von erneuerbaren Energieerzeugungsanlagen. Angesprochen sind ebenfalls verantwortliche Mitarbeiter von Systemlieferanten, aus den Hersteller- und Zulieferunternehmen.

Teilnehmer können bereits im Vorfeld Fragen an die Experten stellen!

Click HIER für weitere Informationen.

MMS and ASN.1 Tutorial

The basics of MMS (Manufacturing Message Specification, ISO 9506) and ASN.1 (Abstract Syntax Notation 1) are available at the NettedAutomation Website.

MMS is a messaging system for modeling real devices and functions and for exchanging information about the real device, and exchanging process data - under real-time conditions - and supervisory control information between networked devices and/or computer applications. MMS is an international standard (ISO 9506) that has been developed and maintained by the ISO Technical Committee 184 (TC184) - Industrial Automation - of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

The object models and messaging services provided by MMS are generic enough to be appropriate for a wide variety of devices, applications, and industries. Whether the device is a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) or a robot, the MMS object models, services and messages are identical. Similarly, applications as diverse as material handling, fault annunciation, energy management, electrical power distribution control, inventory control, and deep space antenna positioning in industries as varied as automotive, aerospace, petro-chemical, electric utility, office machinery and space exploration have put MMS to useful work.

MMS is the base standard to communicate all client/server information exchange for IEC 61850, IEC 61400-25 (in addition to other protocols) and IEC 60870-6 TASE.2 (ICCP). ASN.1 is used in MMS to specify the syntax of messages, ASN.1 BER defines the concrete encoding of the messages. Please note that only a small subset of MMS and ASN.1 is needed by IEC 61850, IEC 61400-25 and TASE.2.

Click HERE to begin the Tutorial ... enjoy.

Freely Available ISO and IEC Standards

A list of more than 300 ISO and IEC standards are made available by ISO/IEC for free download.

The list comprises many standards for information and communication technologies like:

ISO/IEC 7498-1:1994
Information technology -- Open Systems Interconnection -- Basic Reference Model: The Basic Model

ISO/IEC 7498-3:1997
Information technology -- Open Systems Interconnection -- Basic Reference Model: Naming and addressing

ISO/IEC 16448:2002
Information technology -- 120 mm DVD -- Read-only disk

ISO/IEC 23360-1..8:2006
Linux Standard Base (LSB) core specification 3.1-- Part 1 to 8

Click HERE for the full list of freely available standards.

Webservices for IEC 61850 or IEC 61850 LE (Lite Edition) are here

From time to time there is a discussion on the protocol stack for IEC 61850 - which is based on TCP/IP, upper OSI layers and MMS (ISO 9506). Some people today are looking for a lite edition that may use DNP3, IEC 60870-5-10x, or even Webservices.

Is there a need to define these protocol stacks during the years to come? NO!! The Standard IEC 61400-25-4 defines these stacks (published 12 months ago, 2008-08). No, I am not kidding. The Standard has been published by IEC TC 88 (Wind Turbines):

Wind turbines – IEC 61400-25-4: Communications for monitoring and control of wind power plants – Mapping to communication profile

Click HERE for the preview of the standard.

The stacks specified in this part of IEC 61400-25 comprise:

• SOAP-based web services,
• a mapping to OPC/XML-DA,
• a mapping to MMS (IEC 61850-8-1),
• a mapping to IEC 60870-5-104,
• a mapping to DNP3.

All mappings are optional, but at least one optional mapping shall be selected in order to be compliant with this part of IEC 61400-25.

The stacks in IEC 61400-25-4 are covering all or parts of the abstract services in IEC 61400-25-3 (IEC 61850-7-2, ACSI) - excerpt of the list of mappings and services supported:

Example of a service for the Webservice stack (excerpt):

The mapping of services to DNP3 is depicted for one example (excerpt):

The mapping of Common Data Classes to DNP3 is depicted for one example (excerpt):

So: Why waiting for an IEC 61850 LE or for IEC 61850 Webservices - Here they are: IEC 61400-25-4.

If there is a need to revise or improve the stacks, visit the Tissue Data Base for IEC 61400-25.

COPALP supports IEC 61850

The French company COPALP (focused on IEC 61131-3 based provide software tools and components for embedded systems) has integrated the Standard IEC 61850 into their architecture.

According to COPALP: "The Energy and Water industries require more and more complex protocols and control applications to meet the growing demands for more information, more often. ... The IEC 61850 is one new component to the COPALP offer that comes in addition to the existing one like IEC60870-101 slave, IEC60870-104 server and DNP3 slave protocols."

Click HERE for their full news release.

The next step after IEC 61131-3 will be IEC 61499 (Function Blocks) with IEC 61850 information exchange.