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.

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?

Many ISO standards for free download

Some people complain that ISO standards are expensive … there are many ISO standards available for free download from ISO:

http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/index.html

… it may be quite late for widespread use of ISO/OSI standards …

Here are some direct links to standards related to IEC 61850, MMS, ASN.1, …

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 7498-4:1989
Information processing systems -- Open Systems Interconnection -- Basic Reference Model -- Part 4: Management framework

ISO/IEC 8824-1:2008
Information technology -- Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1): Specification of basic notation

ISO/IEC 8825-1:2008
Information technology -- ASN.1 encoding rules: Specification of Basic Encoding Rules (BER), Canonical Encoding Rules (CER) and Distinguished Encoding Rules (DER)

ISO/IEC 8825-4:2008
Information technology -- ASN.1 encoding rules: XML Encoding Rules (XER)

ISO/IEC 9834-1:2008
Information technology -- Open Systems Interconnection -- Procedures for the operation of OSI Registration Authorities: General procedures and top arcs of the International Object Identifier tree

… and many other standards.

What does the OSI-AP-Title “1,3,9999” mean?

Is this identifier more than just a number defined by somebody from IEC TC 57 WG 10? No! The underlying definition is the “OSI Object Identifier model” (OID). This numbering schema has been defined some 30 years ago in the context of ASN.1.

MMS and MAP 3.0 used this identifier concept to get unique object identification (see MAP 3.0). The basics of MMS and OSI have been defined in the 80’s … and a lot of people are still (and again and again) struggling with these concepts that have no real use these days. The concept of OIDs is great – just we do not make use of it in the domain of IEC 61850.

Many people I have trained and many other people have no clue what these numbers mean and what purpose they serve.

“In computing, an object identifier or OID is an identifier used to name an object (compare URN). Structurally, an OID consists of a node in a hierarchically-assigned namespace, formally defined using the ITU-T's ASN.1 standard, X.690. Successive numbers of the nodes, starting at the root of the tree, identify each node in the tree. Designers set up new nodes by registering them under the node's registration authority. The root of the tree contains the following three arcs:
0: ITU-T
1: ISO
2: joint-iso-itu-t”

(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_identifier)

The OID is used by ACSE to establish an application association … for MMS.

Definition in IEC 61850-8-1 Edition2:

Example in SCL notation:

Here is the meaning of the values “1”, “3”, and “9999” for the OSI-API-Title according to http://oid-info.com:

“1” –> http://oid-info.com/cgi-bin/display?oid=1&action=display

“3” –> http://oid-info.com/get/1.3

“9999” –> http://oid-info.com/get/1.3.9999

The value is a reserved value ->

IEC 61850 and especially IEC 61850-8-1 does not (yet?) use the registration of further identifier for specific application.

So, applications (servers) need to use the “1,3,9999.13” to allow MMS/ACSE to establish an application association! Please make sure that your client uses the correct setting of this and the other configuration attributes in the address.

The last value “13” is not known to me … could not find any hint on that. It is not registered.

Please do not change this OID “1,3,9999” used by MMS. The value “1,3,9999.13” is used as an example in 8-1 Ed2. The “13” may be replaced or omitted – I guess.

The value could be empty as well. The following attributes are all optional (IEC 61850-8-1 Ed2):

These are mandatory:

 

Some vendors fix the values ion their PIXIT documents:

Example 1 (Alstom Mx70):

Example 2 (ABB COM600):

Example 3 (Siprotec):

Please check the documentation of the vendors’ IEDs to figure out how the various attributes are used and which ones are required!

Good luck!

Another draft standard that “copies” IEC 61850 Logical Nodes

ISO/TC 205/WG 3 (Building Automation and Control System (BACS) Design) has published recently a new work proposal on power system information models [ISO/TC 205 / SC N 410].

Title: Facility Smart Grid Information Model

Purpose and justification of the proposal:
”The purpose of this standard is to define an abstract, object-oriented information model to enable appliances and control systems in homes, buildings, and industrial facilities to manage electrical loads and generation sources in response to communication with a “smart” electrical grid and to communicate information about those electrical loads to utility and other electrical service providers.

This proposed standard will define an information model intended to provide a basis for revision or creation of technology- specific communication protocol standards that enable products and services to control the operation of electrical energy generating and consuming devices found in homes, commercial buildings, institutional buildings, and in manufacturing and industrial facilities, in cooperation with energy providers in a "smart grid" environment.”

The new work item proposal states that “This proposal builds upon work done by IEC/TC 57 Power Systems Management and Associated Information Exchange … There is no known conflict with an existing IEC or ISO standard or project.”

There may be no conflict … the proposal (same as Draft standard BSR/ASHRAE 201P) “copies” Logical Nodes from IEC 61850 and modifies the Data Object names. For example:

Excerpt from Draft standard BSR/ASHRAE 201P:

5.7.3.3.1.5. DEROperationalModeControls

Operating mode at the ECP.
Control of the operational modes of the DER – constant watts, constant vars, …More than one mode can be set simultaneously for certain logical combinations (61850
Logical Node = DOPM).
Parent Class(es): CommonLN
UML element location: Model Elements from External Sources.IEC61850.61850-7-420. DEROperationalModeControls.

Table 5.193 - Class Attributes

Data Object	Description	CDC
OperationalModeConstantW	Mode of operation - constant watts.	SPC
OperationModeConstantPowerFactor	Mode of operation - constant power factor.	SPC
OperationModeConstantV	Mode of operation - constant voltage.	SPG

Excerpt from Standard IEC 61850-7-420 (LN DOPM):

Data Object	Description	CDC
OpModConW	Mode of operation – constant watts	SPC
OpModConPF	Mode of operation – constant power factor	SPC
OpModConV	Mode of operation – constant voltage	SPC

So, changing the names from abbreviated names to full text names makes it another standard information model … why? If other groups “copy” the Logical Nodes and Data Objects they should keep the names … Or?

I guess the main reason for this is:

Genesis 11:9 “Therefore, it is named Babel, because there the LORD mixed up the language of all the earth.” … languages spoken by humans and by computers!

The many Abstract and Concrete Layers in IEC 61850 (61400-25)

A new Comprehensive Overview of the many different layers in the definition of IEC 61850 has been provided by Karlheinz Schwarz. The various levels of models, the services, the mappings to MMS services and protocols, mapping of MMS messages to ASN.1, ASN.1. BER, ... are confusing - if you don't understand them. This presentation provides a lot of details and examples. 15 Slides bring light to the - often not understood - IEC 61850 layering:

1. Abbreviations
2. Hierarchy of definitions, protocols, …
3. Model (Standard)
4. Model (SCL)
5. Model (IED)
6. Services (ACSI)
7. Model and Service Mapping
8. Services and Protocols (MMS)
9. ASN.1 BER (Basic Encoding Rule)
10. Encoded MMS Message

Slide #1 of 15:

Click HERE to browse all 15 slides.

All these details are hidden in the implementation of IEC 61850 (IEC 61400-25) provided by SystemCorp (Perth, WA, Australia) and by the Smart Grid "Beck-Bone". The IEC 61850 API just needs 8 services:

IEC61850_Create	API to create a client or server object with call-backs for reading, writing and updating data objects
IEC61850_LoadSCLFile	API to read the SCL XML file to get the configuration of server or client
IEC61850_Start	API to start the server or client
IEC61850_Stop	API to stop the server or client
IEC61850_Free	API to delete a client or server object created
IEC61850_Read	Read the value of a specified data attribute
IEC61850_Write	Write the value to a specified data attribute
IEC61850_Update	Update the value of a specified data attribute

The three last API services are the crucial services an Application programmer has to deal with. The Beck Development Kit DK61 and the DLL demos provide application examples (in C/C++ source code).

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.