Just Published: CDV IEC 62351-7 -- Network and System Management (NSM) Data Object Models

IEC TC 57 has just published the first CDV of
IEC 62351-7 comprising 208 pages:
Power systems management and associated information exchange - Data and communications security - Part 7: Network and system management (NSM) data object models
The ballot closes 2016-06-17
This draft STANDARD will (when released) supersede the Technical Specification "IEC TS 62351-7:2010".

The NSM objects will provide monitoring data for TC57 protocols used for power systems
(IEC 61850, IEC 60870-5-104) and device specific environmental and security status. Also
IEEE 1815 DNP3 is included in the list of monitored protocols. The NSM data objects use the
naming conventions developed for IEC 61850, expanded to address NSM issues. For sake of
generality these data objects, and the data types of which they are comprised, are defined as
abstract models of data objects.
In order to allow the integration of the monitoring of power system devices within the NSM
environment in this standard a mapping of objects towards the SNMP protocol is provided.

110 pages contain the SNMP MIB Mapping.
Excerpt of some objects related to MMS:

Please take some time to comment.
The document should be available online for comments by end of this week or so.
Check HERE.

Monitoring the Battery of the Boeing Dreamliner 787 would have helped to prevent damages

I guess you remember the trouble Boeing was faced with when the huge battery packs in the Dreamliner 787 some two years ago. The Auxiliary Power Unit Battery Fire was likely caused by several severe “cell internal short circuiting and the potential for thermal runaway of one or more battery cells, fire, explosion, and flammable electrolyte release”.

More precise Condition Monitoring would have helped to prevent such incidents – and would have shown very early that the design of the battery system was quite fragile.

One of the findings (page 91 of the released incident report) is:

“More accurate cell temperature measurements and enhanced temperature and voltage monitoring and recording could help ensure that excessive cell temperatures resulting from localized or other sources of heating could be detected and addressed in a timely manner to minimize cell damage.”

Click HERE for the complete official NTSB report.

Monitoring batteries is very crucial the more our life depends on these systems – in airplanes, in substations, power stations, mobile systems, communication infrastructure … It is not sufficient to have a battery – the batteries must be maintained, tested from time to time, and monitored continuously.

Two groups (I am aware of) have defined Battery Monitoring information models:

1. IEC 61850-90-9 (Use of IEC 61850 for Electrical Storage Systems)

Excerpt of the battery system (without further discussion):

2. IETF EMAN (Energy Management)

Definition of Managed Objects for Battery Monitoring / draft-ietf-eman-battery-mib-13

Click HERE for the EMAN draft for Battery Monitoring.

Battery monitoring could safe life!

MOXA’s Dual Protocol Approach: MMS and SNMP

MOXA has announced to support a dual protocol approach in their communication infrastructure: IEC 61850/MMS and SNMP.

This is no surprise: already in the first year of standardization of IEC61850 EdF (France) proposed to use SNMP (simple network management protocol) to carry IEC 61850 payload modeled in a specialized MIB. There was very little support for SNMP.

It is natural that the communication infrastructure also provides IEC 61850/MMS access to the many data objects used in switches, routers and other equipment. IEC 61850-7-4 Edition 2 has a lot of new – communication related – logical nodes that are linked directly to network management like “Physical communication channel supervision” logical node (LCCH):

RxCnt - Number of received messages
RedRxCnt - Number of received messages on redundant channel
TxCnt - Number of sent messages

This is related to the communication infrastructure … Or?

Click HERE for details from MOXA.

MOXA concludes in a White paper:

“Moxa’s new line of PowerTrans IEC 61850 switches now come with full MMS compatibility, with a complete implementation of IEC 61850 data modeling and a built-in MMS server. Our entire line of substation computers, switches, and other associated hardware all still feature our own enhanced SNMP support (with custom MIB files), but Moxa welcomes any inquiry into further customizing our switches, embedded computers, and other substation IT hardware with full or enhanced MMS support, made to your order.”

IETF Energy Management WG (EMAN) inspired by IEC 61850 and CIM

IETF EMAN, Energy Management, is an active WG that is modeling (in the MIB) a lot of power related real world objects “connected” one way or the other to a network.  SNMP is used to access this information. The objective of Energy Management (EMAN) is to provide an energy management framework for networked devices.

Networked devices could be Ethernet switches, routers, battery controller, other storages,  gateways, … more or less anything that is connected to a network!

http://tools.ietf.org/wg/eman/

The WG sees IEC 61850 as the most applicable standard to EMAN. Concepts from IEC 61850 and CIM have been reused (somehow) by the EMAN WG. A closer cooperation of the models would be appreciated by the next generation of engineers and programmers …

There is ONE real world – many models could be thought of to describe that single real world. I hope that for energy applications we will prevent to get too many models. IEC 61850 models should be used as default solution in all devices closely connected to the physical level of energy systems … different notations and protocols may be used BUT the content/semantic should be identical!

A MMXU should model the 3-phase electrical system – all over and in all models.