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.

Crucial Vulnerabilities Exist in the VxWorks IPnet Stack

According to Security Week (reported the other day):

"In late July, IoT security firm Armis disclosed eleven vulnerabilities found by its researchers in the VxWorks real time operating system (RTOS). The flaws, six of which have been described as critical, can allow a remote attacker to take control of impacted systems.
Armis said the vulnerabilities exist in the VxWorks IPnet stack and they expose over 200 million mission-critical devices from around the world to attacks, including in the healthcare, manufacturing, cybersecurity, tech, and industrial automation sectors. ..."

Devices from several vendors might be impacted ...

Click HERE for the full report. There you find links to the vendor's recommendations ... You know what that could mean? One vendor notes: "Applying the update causes the device / module to go through a single restart cycle."

IEC 61859 Training Course in Stockholm is Filling-Up - Reserve your Seat Now

FMTP, KTH, OPAL RT, and NettedAutomation have scheduled a very comprehensive IEC 61850 Training in Stockholm (Sweden) for 19-23 September 2016.
The course is filling-up very fast.
Please reserve your seat as soon as possible.

Click HERE for the brochure with all details.
A similar Course (4 days) is scheduled for Karlsruhe (Germany) 10.-13. October 2016.

See you soon.

Are you looking for IEC 61850 TICS, PICS, PIXIT, … Documents?

I talked the other day to experts of a big user. We shared our experience of increased “information hiding” when it comes to the availability and accessibility of the various documents like PICS, PIXIT, TICS, … Product handbooks, manuals, … When you checked websites of major vendors some years ago, you could find a bunch of technical material … I have figured out that these documents are quite often hidden … or not anymore available online.

I found still good examples for downloading many of the these crucial documents:

Click HERE for a Website of ABB to find PICS and other documents

Click HERE for a Website of Alstom Grid to find PICS …

Click HERE for a Website of Schneider Electric to find PICS and other documents.

Click HERE for a Website of Siemens to find some 30 PIXIT documents.
Click HERE to see a list of some 40 references to IEC 61850 Ethernet Module EN100.

Congratulation to the IEC 61850 Teams!

Enjoy the documents. Are you looking for help to understand these documents? Why do we need these at all? Isn’t IEC 61850 a standard? … and then all these documents …

Click HERE to get help!

Power Quality Information modeled in IEC 61850

IEC 61850 is a powerful standard – also for describing the exchange of Power Quality Information.

IEC 61850 has been extended to support many advanced power quality applications like those defined in IEC 61000-4-30 and EN 50160. IEC 61850-7-4 Edition 2 defines logical nodes, that support modeling and configuring event sequencing with additional quality reporting and waveform recording.

Excerpt of logical nodes for power quality:

• Harmonics (MHAI)
• Flicker (MFLK)
• Imbalanced power calculations (MADV)
• Frequency variation (QFVR)
• Current transient (QITR)
• Current unbalance variation (QUIB)
• Voltage transient (QVTR)
• Voltage unbalance variation (QVUB) and
• Voltage variation (QVVR).

Click HERE for a nice summary published by Schneider Electric.
Click HERE for a draft list of Logical Nodes for Power Quality (this content was used as input to the development of IEC 61850-5 Edition 2 and IEC 61850-7-4 Edition 2).