What is an IED (Intelligent Electronic Device)?

IEC 61850 deals a lot with IEDs. But: What is an IED?

First you can check with two documents of the series IEC 61850:

IEC 61850-1 - Intelligent Electronic Device (IED)
any device incorporating one or more processors with the capability of receiving or sending data/control from or to an external source (for example, electronic multifunktional meters, digital relays, controllers)

IEC 61850-1 - Physical Device (PD)
equivalent to an IED as used in the context of this standard

IEC 61850-5 - Intelligent electronic device (IED)
device incorporating one or more processors with the capability to execute application 
functions, store data locally in a memory and exchange data with other IEDs (sources or sinks) over a digital link

Many years after these definitions have been published, we have different views on the term IED:

Physical IED (in the context of IEC 61850 and IEC 61400-25) - any physical device incorporating one or more processors with the capability of exchanging information (derived from IEC 61850 information models and exchanged with IEC 61850 services for client/server and publisher/subscriber) with other physical device(s). The semantic, the coding and decoding of the exchanged information (messages) follows the standard series.

IED Configuration (in the context of IEC 61850 and IEC 61400-25) - formal description (section in the SCL according to part 6) of the IEC 61850 information models linked to the IEC 61850 information exchange roles client, server, publisher, or subscriber, and the signal flow between physical IEDs.

IED Role (in the context of IEC 61850 and IEC 61400-25) - implementation of the IED Configuration: implementation of the IEC 61850 information model plus implementation of any combination of the following information exchange roles: client, server, publisher, or subscriber.

A Physical IED can host any combination of IED Roles.

Note: A gateway may host a server role to an up-link (first SCL file plus a client role and a subscriber role (both configured in a second SCL file) to the underlying Physical IEDs.

Please note that in SCL a Server configuration comprises the models including the DataSets, Report Control Blocks, GOOSE Control Blocks, SV Control Blocks, and Log Control Blocks:

From a communication point of view GOOSE and SV publisher and subscriber are NOT part of the client/server communication ... 

I hope this definition will help to reduce the disconnects in the communication of the experts.

Let me know what you think.

IEC Opens the Glossaries and Other Contents of Published Standards and Specifications

IEC has opened their databases with the myriad of abbreviations and terms used in the published material. If you want to know what an IED is, just search for IED on the landing page ... 

Here are two examples for the search in the Glossaries and in the publications:

and:

Thanks to the IEC Central Office.

Cyber Security and SAFETY in Power Systems

The National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) at NIST just released a draft of the NIST Cybersecurity Practice Guide, SP 1800-23, Energy Sector Asset Management, on September 23, 2019, and is requesting your feedback. Public comments on the draft will close on November 25, 2019. "...that will help energy organizations address the security challenges of OT asset management. ..."

The main objective is to have a look at "programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and intelligent electronic devices (IEDs), which provide command and control information on operational technology (OT) networks ..."

Click HERE for the Guide.

The Guide seems to be written by mainly non-protection engineers or even non-electrical engineers. I have read the other day in a discussion about the Guide that the term SAFETY was not mentioned in the  guide ... huch ...

Here is my explanation why SAFETY is not in the scope:

The safety in electric power systems is mainly managed by PROTECTION devices. These devices protect humans, equipment and power flow. Protection has the highest priority in electric power systems. Protection is also crucial for availability and reliability. Protection engineers are - in my view - the most critical engineers.

My experience is that IT and OT people fear the high voltage ... starting at 100 Volt or so ... so, that may be the reason the document NIST SP 1800-23 does not discuss any protection (SAFETY) related function.

They don't have Sr. protection engineers in their mind ... maybe they don't know what these engineers are doing ... and how important they are to keep the power flowing.

A friend of mine (a senior protection engineer) and I have conducted many IEC 61850 seminars together ... I have always admired him!!

My friend answered:

In general unfortunately it is as you describe.
The circuit breaker doesn’t work? The protection engineers have invented the “breaker failure”. This is a bit biased, any component can fail of course…
The Sampled Values are not delivered? The relay has to manage that. They are “delivered wrong”? The relay has to try to understand it and be robust.
Yes, it is probably more difficult to design and set a good protection system (including the design of the relay) than doing an airplane...

IEC TC 57 Has Published New Work Proposal For IEC 61850-6-3

IEC TC 57 has just published a new work proposal for IEC 61850-6-3 proposed by the Chinese National Committee:

57/2075/NP
Communication networks and systems for power utility automation –
Part 6-3: Configuration description language for physical resource related to IEDs in substation network systems

CLOSING DATE FOR VOTING:
2019-05-03

Scope:
"The international standard defines the emerging requirements from physical resource description side to facilitate the design, system integration, test, fault analysis and commission, etc. during different stages when IEC 61850 is applied. It described how the physical resource information, such as IED’s dimension, communication port and optical connection, is to be modelled using the System Configuration Language (SCL) which is incorporated under IEC 61850. The application scenarios include but are not limited these mentioned stages.

Furthermore, IEC 61850-6-X helps to fill a gap and establish a relationship between logic function and physical resource information according to the existing IEC 61850 communication structure and configuration description language. The initial focus on application within substations, includes following cases:

• Physical information related to infrastructure in electrical substations, including cubicle, trench, optical, wire, etc.
• Physical information related to devices in electrical substations, including device dimension, amount model, physical port, etc.

The proposed international standard specifies a file format for describing dimension, communication connection port, optical wire, cubicle, trench related to IEDs within substations, and the relations between them and logical functions."

The NP notes that "In China, by the end of 2016, nearly 3,000 substations of 110 kV or above based on IEC 61850 had been under operation."

The standard series IEC 61850 is really growing in 2019, see extra post.

Security – Hacking a Car is round the corner

I guess you have read or heard the news about the Hackers that took remote control of a car on the highway. Two researchers exploited a zero-day vulnerability in a Jeep Cherokee’s Uconnect infotainment system to gain wireless control of the car.

Click HERE for the report.

You may be happy to drive a car manufactured “before Internet” hit the road. Now, you can see that the Internet can seriously “hit the road” !

Fortunately there are people that have expected this to happen. Some of them in the USA have already become active: The world’s first automotive cyber-security law may force automakers to deliver software updates and stop vehicle tracking as part of new IT security standards regarding connected cars in the US.

Click HERE to read more background information on the new US Senate Bill.

Click HERE for the Senate Bill.

The number of cars is much bigger than the number of substations – in the USA and in Europe … and all over. It is very likely (from my point of view) that the automobile industry will develop very soon international standards for the Security and Privacy in Cars. I expect that such a development will impact also the discussion on security for power delivery systems. The damage that could be caused by hacking a electrical delivery system could be much higher than turn-on the air-condition in a car.

I have experienced more than 30 years ago that the automakers are strong in introducing standards: The GM led the project MAP (Manufacturing Automation Protocols). Unfortunately manufacturers of automation equipment decided not to follow GM’s vision.

With regard to security, I hope that the automakers will help to bring more security to any kind of smart devices: in cars, in homes, in factories, in substations and …

In case of somebody taking over a car, it may be very dangerous to securely bring a (or even many) cars to a hold. But bringing a part of a power system to a hold means: BLACKOUT!! The “SECURE” state: “STOPPED” means: no power!

In case of a stopped car, you may take the next bus or just walk. A stopped power delivery system must be brought back to operation using again thousands of smart devices. Have you ever asked yourself how many smart network-connected computers are involved in power delivery systems? The number goes into the many millions …

Discuss security issues with your colleagues and your management. And maybe contract with experts …

BDEW Whitepaper on Security in Power Systems

The well-accepted dual-language BDEW Whitepaper

- Requirements for Secure Control and Telecommunication Systems
- Anforderungen an sichere Steuerungs- und Telekommunikationssysteme

is now available at a new link:

Download Security Whitepaper [pdf].

IEC 61850-90-13 – New Work on IEC 61850 for Steam and Gas Turbines

The new work item has been introduced in the work programme under the title:
IEC 61850-90-13 Ed.1 (57/1259/RVN):
Communication networks and systems for power utility automation –
Part 90-13: Extension of IEC 61850 information models to also include logical nodes and data models for steam and gas turbines

IEC 61850 defines very common concepts, information models, services and configuration language that can be used in many other application domains outside substations. MMS – as a basic communication service to which IEC 61850 models and services are mapped – was originally defined for the manufacturing floor (MMS – Manufacturing Message Specification). So it is no surprise that it can be used there and in many other application domains.

One key issue in power plants is the RDS PP (related to KKS):

 

Examples of RDS PP for Wind Power Plants and IEC 61400-25/61850:

Binding of Information Models:

 

Examples from IEC 61850-7-510 (Hydroelectric power plants – Modelling concepts and guidelines):

Step by step we learn that IEC 61850 is in harmony with many other designation standards … and it can be used for almost all online (runtime) information exchange and system and IED configuration.

IEC 61850 ready for VHP-Ready (Virtual Heat and Power Ready)

Vattenfall Europe New Energy GmbH and Vattenfall Europe Wärme AG seem to be ahead of many other utilities in implementing “virtual Power Plants”. They have set a standard on how to use renewable energy in a virtual power plant. The information exchange is realized with two IEC TC 57 standards: IEC 60870-5-104 (Fernwirktechnik) and IEC 61850-7-420 (DER).

Vattenfall is one of the leaders of the implementation of virtual power plants. The concept is called: VHP READY – Virtual Heat & Power Ready.

Their objective is by end of 2012 to provide their services to 150.000 housing units (with some 500 CHP or heat pumps) communicating with a Vattenfall control center. By 2013 they expect some 1,000 CHP or heat pumps providing heat and electric power to some 200.000 housing with an electric capacity of 200 MW.

The requirements document lists a total number of signals of 40:

• 8 binary status signals,
• 17 measurements and calculated values,
• 5 metered values, and
• 10 control points.

Requirements document referring to IEC 60870-5-104 and IEC 61850 can be downloaded [German, pdf, 23 pages, 360 KB]

VHP READY – Virtual Heat & Power Ready

Vattenfall virtuelles Kraftwerk

Several other projects are under way in Germany to implement a similar approach. In one project there is already a plan to define (and possibly standardize) a specific profile (subset) of IEC 61850-7-420. Such a profile would represent the above some 40 signals – a very simple set of models that could easily be implemented in an IEC 61850 IED like the Beck IPC IEC 61850 com.tom:

More information on Beck IPC IEC 61850 com.tom.

Basic component for IEC 61850: the IPC@CIP

Download the discussion about benefits using Beck’s ready-to-go solutions with IEC 61850 [pdf, 2.3 MB, 18 pages]

Siemens Energy Sold more than 170,000 IEC 61850 IEDs

Siemens Energy reported yesterday that they have sold more than 170,000 Protection and Control IEDs compliant with IEC 61850 applied in substation automation systems.

Click HERE to read the press release.

Five IEC 61850 Gurus Conduct Tutorial in Sydney, March 07-09

The comprehensive Tutorial with five world renown professionals is filling up very fast - to get a seat register NOW. The IEC 61850 Tutorial is scheduled for Sydney (Australia), 7-9 March 2011.

Click HERE for the program and other details [pdf].
Click HERE for the registration form [word].

Click HERE for additional events ... all over.

NettedAutomation will provide an Evaluation Kit for IEC 61850 clients/server and publisher/subscriber - DLL that runs under Windows. The kit can be used after installation for six months.

By the way, Karlheinz Schwarz is a member of IEC TC 57 WG 10, 17, 18, 19 and IEC TC 88 PT 25, ... he received the IEC 1906 Award for his engagement in bringing IEC 61850 to the wind power industry.

IEC 61850 Data Acquisition Options - An Overview

IEC 61850 provides several options to access the values of modeled information in sever devices. The following slide lists all options of IEC 61850-7-2 (ACSI - Abstract Communication Service Interface):

Depending on your needs you may use one or the the other option. Reporting is the most elaborated service. The behavior of reporting depends on the configuration of so-called Report Control Blocks. Reporting with Integrity Period set, e.g., to 1 second is more efficient than polling a list of data objects every second! Because polling needs two messages: request with then object references of all data to be polled and response with all values. Reporting with Integrity Period requires a single report with all values every second only. You save 50 per cent of the messages and a lot of processing resources. You can combine integrity period (e.g., 1 minute) with immediate transmissions of changes (events). This would save even more (in case there are events very seldom).

Before you can configure an optimized traffic (messages going back and forth in a Network in real-time or relaxed in seconds) you need to understand your needs - the arrival rate of values and the needs of the applications that access these values. And of course you need to understand the standard and what vendors have implemented. Some applications require information from other devices in the range of a few microseconds - this requires usually GOOSE. The various options serve different requirements with regard to the timeliness. It is easy to fill up the bandwidth of 10 GBit/s with wrong configurations. Monitoring for deadband changes (delta changes) of 0.001 per cent could cause a lot of messages ... ;-)

Smart Grids require smart systems and smart devices - all need smart people!

Get Smart Quick with IEC 61850 on a Chip

The long wait for a lite implementation of IEC 61850 is over:

IEC61850Li® is available now

Get Smart Quick with the IEC61850Li (IEC 61850 Lite implementation). One interesting product with the IEC 61850 Lite implementation is the IPC@Chip® with IEC 61850 Client, Server, GOOSE publisher and subscriber on the Chip in addition to IEC 61131-3 (PLC programming language), C/C++ programming, FTP, TELNET, TCP/IP, web server, 2 Ethernet ports, GSM/GPRS, WiFi, CAN bus, and many other possibilities.

The Chip and Ready-To-Go Modules (with the chip on board) are applied for IEDs, Gateways, RTUs, Data and Information Managers, Smart Grids, Distributed Energy Resources like PV, CHP, Wind, Hydro, Fuel Cells, ...

Click HERE to get more details and contact information.

A demonstration will be provided during the DistribuTech 2010, Tampa (Florida), 23-25 March 2010: See you at the UCA IUG Booth 1932

IEC 61850-6 (Configuration Language) Edition 2 has been published

The first part of Edition 2 of IEC 61850 has been published as International Standard:

IEC 61850-6 Edition 2 (2009-12)
Communication networks and systems for power utility automation –
Part 6: Configuration description language for communication in electrical substations related to IEDs

Click HERE for the Preview of the standard IEC 61850-6 Edition 2.

The second edition provides several crucial extensions. One extension is the way how to specify the source of a signal needed by an IED in more detail. The following slide from the NettedAutomation training shows that in the SCL file for IED B the source can be specified:

The list of extended details for the specification of the signal source is shown in the next slide:

 

This allows to have a complete specification of the signal and how it is communicated. The specification uses a reference from the destination IED back to the source IED. The <Inputs>...</Inputs> represent a crucial part of the "wiring plan" of a substation automation system or any other automation system. 

The "Semantic Web" in Power System Automation

Traditionally almost all communication solutions for automation and especially for power system automation is build on hundred and thousands of "Points" (Signals) organized in huge lists. Each "Point" has a type and a kind of a simple index (or identifier). Different vendors (or even different people) use different list. In one case the "Phase A Voltage to ground" may have the index "26717" in another case it may be "363.26". Do you know what these numbers mean?

This is comparable to the web of today: search engines are searching mainly for ASCII strings. If I search for "Guenther" "Wilhelm", I could not specify that "Guenther" is the first name and "Wilhelm" is the family name. Google returns 18,700,000 hits. Searching for "Guenther Wilhelm" returns just 30,000 hits. The second is closer to what I am looking for. I would like to search linke this: "firstname = Guenther" and "familyname = Wilhelm". In this example we have added some semantic (meaning) to the names.

It would be nice to have reasonable names for the "signals" instead of just numbers and to have semantic added to the "signals". This would allow to interpret the list of signals - IF THE NAMES ARE CHOOSEN TO MEAN SOMETHING USEFUL. IEC 61850 and IEC 61400-25 are standards that define semantic and names for each signal - like the Semantic Web does.

According to Wikipedia is "The Semantic Web an evolving development of the World Wide Web in which the meaning (semantics) of information and services on the web is defined, making it possible for the web to understand and satisfy the requests of people and machines to use the web content."

In IEC 61850 we have decided many years ago that the name for the three-phase electrical system should be the same all over (in principle) and the same for all voltage levels - because the electrical system is the smae all over (with different voltages and frequences). The following picture shows two voltage levels and a single model for the three-phase system. The name "MMXU" stands for a logical node defining all crucial information that describes a three-phase electrical system. The "PhV" (phase voltage) has a "PhsA" value etc. Each of the values has SI-Units, scaling factors etc. These names expose the same information allover, in all applications (in substations and in factories, on ships, on railways, ...). Why do we need myriads of different indices in current solutions for the same information?

The communication based on simple lists seems to be simple. But if your company has Millions of points to test and to manage ... what then? Guess there is no need to discuss the problems handling huge lists - lists that are differently formatted and contained in Wordfiles, Spreadsheets, pdf files, just on paper, data bases, ... How could one make these lists machine readable? One of my customers told me that the have to maintain 1,300 documents containing signal lists - wow.

IEC 61850 is - to my knowledge - the only comprehensive standard that defines common and specific information models for the electric power industry and beyond. We had a proposal to add a "FishCounter" for hydro power plants ... why not? The standard also defines services to exchange the values and concrete protocols to serialize the services.

IEC 61850 could be understood as the "Semantic Web" of the power automation and protection world. Now you can read the Phase voltage of MMXU1 of the logical device SpyDER under the address: 192.168.1.77. In order to know where this device is located you just can talk to the device to retrieve some description or you can use the system configuration description file (according to IEC 61850-6). This file has all semantic information including the binding of the model to the real world.

Click HERE for an example of a device that implements the MMXU logical node and exposes the voltage of the power outlet it is connected to.

In this regard IEC 61850 is MAYA (Most Advanced Yet Accepted) -- accepted all over.

New Tool for IEC 61850 and IEC 61400-25

Ingeteam Technology (Spain) released the INGESYS®energyFactorySuite 2.0: a comprehensive suite of tools for modeling, configuring and commissioning IEC 61850 and IEC 61400-25 systems.

Click HERE for a description of Ingeteam's IEDs for power system automation [pdf, 1.5 MB].
Click HERE for a description of Ingeteam's NEW Tool for IEC 61850 and IEC 61400-25 [pdf, 0.85 MB].
Click HERE to read more details on the tool and find link to download a demo version.

First PLC supporting IEC 61850 in comprehensive Hands-On Training

Beckhoff (Verl, Germany) provides an IEC 61850 compliant Standard PLC with a Server according to IEC 61850 for the comprehensive Hands-On Training in Frankfurt (Germany) on October 20-23, 2009:

The Seminar and Hands-on Training  will cover all crucial aspects of the standards and common IEDs from ABB, Areva, Siemens, Omicron, Megger, ... and Beckhoff.

Click HERE for details of the program.
Click HERE for other training opportunities all over.
Click HERE for more details on the Beckhoff PLC with IEC 61850 support.

U.S. Smart Grid development gets support from Europe

AREVA’s Transmission and Distribution division (T&D, based in France) announced the other day that it will deliver crucial components (IEDs - Intelligent Electronic Devices) to support Smart Grid research by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI).

AREVA provides 13 different IEDs, to be used in the Institute’s labs. The devices will help EPRI to implementing the ‘Smart Grid’: distance protection, transformer protection, line current differential management, feeder management, phasor measurement and GPS time synchronization.
The devices provided by AREVA and other companies, will be used to build a small Smart Grid so that various scenarios and tests can be performed. One of the building blocks will be the IEC 61850 process bus and station bus for system wide interoperability. 

“The goal of this project is to provide a test bed for new ideas to address the challenges facing the Smart Grid,” noted Paul Myrda, Technical Executive at EPRI. “Ultimately, we expect to couple this facility with our existing ‘living lab’ that primarily deals with end-user devices and with our ‘Sensor’ lab that is focused on asset health assessment.”

Smart Grids will be composed of devices, systems and tools from multiple vendors. The key issue in multi-vendor projects is the Interoperability of all components that provide or consume information for the many tasks.

An interoperability test lab based on the IEC 61850 station bus has been build up by STRI (Ludvika, Sweden):

Click HERE for an overview about the IEC 61850 Interoperability lab.
Click HERE for a story on "The true meaning of IEC 61850 - Interoperability!"
Click HERE to see what's next on the agenda of training for multi-vendor systems.

SystemCorp (Perth, Australia) offers new IEC 61850 IEDs

The IEC 61850 software stack PIS-10 accommodates client and server functionality. It is portable across various software platforms. Data throughput and other Ethernet related performance criteria are inherited from the operating system.

The stack supports MMS, GOOSE, Sampled Value functionality as well as buffered and unbuffered reporting. Data sets are defined using the WebCAN Designer Studio configuration software.

Protoocol conversation from other SCADA protocols such as IEC 8750-5-10 or DNP3.0 require only the additional executable files to be downloaded and configured through WebCAN Designer Studio.

Products:

• Portable IEC 61850 Client and Server Software Stack PIS-10
• Fully Integrated Single Chip Solution IPC-10
• Compact Protocol Converter CFE-40
• Distribution Remote Terminal Unit MRU-10
• WebCAN Substation RTU and Data Gateway
• WebCAN Designer Studio Configuration Tool

Platforms:

• Microsoft Windows XP, 2003/2008 and Vista
• Ubuntu Linux (x86,x86-64)
• Embedded Linux (ARM, Coldfire)
• Beck @Chip SC1x3 RTOS
• Other platforms available on request

Click HERE for a two page description [pdf].

IEC 61850-3 compliant Computer for Substations and Power Plants

Moxa has announced the Moxa's DA-681 x86-based embedded computer line, that has just passed IEC 61850-3 power certification. This specially designed IED (embedded system) is intended for any power automation and substation application that require to be compliant with the IEC 61850-3 standard.

The general purpose IED has six Ethernet Ports and many other serial ports! It runs Embedded Linux, WinCE 6.0, or WinXPe.

Click HERE for more details.