IEC 61499 Function Blocks At Schneider Electric Automation Solution

 In a white paper published by Schneider Electric you can read:

"The IEC 61499 standard sets a foundation for industrial automation application portability that creates wide-ranging benefits, including easy IT/OT system convergence, improved return-on-investment on software applications that can run independent of any hardware platform, and engineering design efficiency that radically speeds up new product time-to-market. ... Plug and Produce Systems: The move to automation systems based on IEC 61499 is more than a simple technology change. It has the potential to fundamentally change the way processes and machines are designed."

Click HERE for a new white paper on IEC 61499 from Schneider Electric.

Click HERE for a list of posts related to IEC 61499 ... and IEC 61850.

Is Industry 4.0 Really a Revolution? And IEC 61850?

There are so many discussions, concerns, arguments ... Pros and Cons regarding Industry 4.0 or the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4.0, IoT, IIoT, Cloud, Edge, data lake, ...).

The most remarkable statements I have heard are from Mr. Ralph Langner who does not believe that it is a revolution at all ...

"Is Industrie 4.0 actually the 4th Industrial Revolution as touted by it's many proponents. Ralph Langner tackles that question in this 20 minute video from S4xEurope."

Click HERE for the youtube video of his presentation (20 min)

Please find some personal opinions:

Please find a paper discussing the "sprint" versus "marathon" in automation of electric power systems I wrote in 2012 through the following post:

http://blog.nettedautomation.com/2012/03/smart-grids-19th-century-invention.html

Here is part of my experience:

I was (as a 21 year old skilled worker in 1973 ... just married) responsible for maintaining a fire alarm system with 6,000 alarm buttons (from a famous vendor ... full of TTL chips ...). The system stopped almost every night ... I had to drive downhill 60 km ... to switch it off and on and go back home ... I was not skilled enough to do anything serious about it ... just wrote reports to my boss ... he ignored everything ... I quit my job in 1974 and went back to high school in January 1995 and university in 1977 ... 7 1/2 years later I finished university with four kids in 1982 ... went back to that same company ... quit again in 1992 partly, in 1997 completely ...

The most crucial reason to quit in 1992/1997 was: The standardization of industrial communication systems in IEC TC 65 released a myriad of non-interoperable Fieldbusses ... good for selling standards ... very BAD for maintenance people and many others ... can you imagine to be an expert in tens of fieldbusses?!

Check out this post:
http://blog.nettedautomation.com/2017/04/iec-sc-65c-published-5000-pages-of-new.html

Oh my dear ...

I just checked my personal records from the 70s and found the weekly reports of my daily maintenance activities ... spent many days to switch off/on the Fire Alarm System ...

This may happen every hour these days where maintenance people just switch IEDs off and on ... in the hope that it will work after restart.

We need more well educated and skilled experts!!! ... grey hair seniors ...

What's about IEC 61850? Is the introduction of this standard series different compared to the fieldbus standard series IE 61158? Sure ... there is a crucial difference:

MANY Fieldbus standards for ONE application (real-time data exchange) ...

ONE IEC 61850 for MANY applications (real-time, protection, asset data, configuration, engineering, ...SCADA, ...).

IEC 61850 series is quite comprehensive and complex ... Yes. But: it seems to be easier to learn and experience ONE complex standard than to do this for 50+ solutions!! IEC 61850 is not a revolution - it could be used to extend existing solutions ... it provides a new approach that could prevent the proliferation of hundreds of vendor-specific solutions ...

And when it comes to security, there is ONE standard series (IEC 62351) for IEC 61850, IEC 60870-6 (TASE.2), IEC 60870-5-104, DNP3, ... 

Smart Grid Communication Challenges With IXXAT SG Gateways

Smart Grid communication challenges can easily be solved with IXXAT SG-gateways

New IIoT gateways from HMS allow industrial 
equipment to communicate with smart grids.

IXXAT SG-gateways...

• Enable easy remote control and management of electrical systems
• Support IEC 61850 client/server, GOOSE, proxy gateway, IEC 60870-5-104 client/server and VHPready
• Provide Modbus-TCP client/server and Modbus-RTU master/slave interfaces
• Enable SNMP, SNTP, and cloud connectivity
• Provide I/O, M-Bus, PROFIBUS, PROFINET and EtherNet/IP interfaces
• Are safe – firewall, OpenVPN & password protection
• Support IEC 60870-5-104 redundancy acc. edition 2 (Norwegian Convention)

Click HERE to enter the world of IEC protocols for power delivery systems

[EN, DE, FR, CN].
Hier klicken ... für ein Kurzvideo und weitere Informationen ... von Martin Matt, Produktmanager Energy Communication bei HMS Networks, über intelligente Smart-Grid-Gateways.

Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT) - Security Framework

The Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) has published a draft Security Framework (173 pages).
The framework is quite interesting for all experts involved in information exchange systems ... also in the energy application domain.
The Introductions says in the second paragraph:
"These [IIOT - Industrial Internet of Things] systems differ from traditional industrial control systems by being connected extensively to other systems and people, increasing their diversity and scale. They also differ from traditional information technology (IT) systems in that they use sensors and actuators in an industrial environment. These are typically systems that interact with the physical world where uncontrolled change can lead to hazardous conditions. This potential risk increases the importance of safety, reliability, privacy and resiliency beyond the levels expected in many traditional IT environments."
The power systems are using sensors and actuators communicating with protection and automation systems for the last decades. The industry has developed the standard series IEC 61850, IEC 62351, IEC 60870-5-104, DNP3, IEC 61968/70, and IEC 61400-25 to provide a basis for safe, reliable, resilient, and secure power delivery systems. These stable standards are state-of-the-art in power delivery systems. And they are referenced in many Frameworks and Roadmaps. The series IEC 62351 is one of the crucial series dealing with security in power automation systems:

Click HERE for a copy of the IIC framework [pdf, 4.6 MB].
Click HERE for a white paper about the IEC 62351 series [pdf, 3.5 MB] and HERE for a page on Wikipedia.

The IIC Security Framework gives an overview about many aspects in the future distributed automation and which aspects are crucial to be managed.