Looking for an Open Source Multi Protocol Gateway for IEC 104, TASE.2/ICCP, IEC 61850, OPC-UA ...?

The standards IEC 60870-5-104, IEC 60870-6 (TASE.2, ICCP), IEC 61850, OPC-UA and other (often legacy solutions) are crucial for the power delivery systems all over!

Therefore the ability to translate from one protocol to another is a key feature for every TSO (Transmission System Operator). As the needs are growing and the number of use cases are flourishing (e.g. RTE needs thousands of instances of MPG (Multi Protocol Gateways), they are incented to look for a highly cost effective solution. On this observation, Swissgrid and RTE decided to take over that challenge by initiating a Proof of Concept on an open source basis - according to a news published at LinkedIn the other day.

Title: "First step toward an Open Source multiprotocol Gateway initiated by Swissgrid and RTE"

Click HERE for more information posted at LinkedIn.

Sebastien HENRY (Directeur SI & Télécommunications chez RTE Réseau de Transport d'Electricité) said: "RTE is committed to invest in open source for the development of an ecosystem of IT solutions for the energy sector. I am very confident in the fact that with the multiprotocol gateway, a small piece of software widely needed in our infrastructures, will demonstrate this strategy worth being followed."

Training in Montreal (Canada): Mastering the complexity of IEC 61850

OPAL-RT TECHNOLOGIES invites you to the very crucial Training:

Mastering the complexity of IEC 61850

Adoption of the IEC 61850 standard in North America is slowly emerging for Transmission and Distribution markets, but an increasing number of implementations is expected, either through new installations or following cost-benefit assessments in modernization projects. Now is a good time to get in touch with the state-of-the-art technologies and standard that will guide present and future SAS design.

During this seminar, truly experienced, vendor independent engineers will help you see and understand how to use the core parts of the IEC 61850 standard applied in substation design, monitoring, protection and control applications. You will learn from senior protection engineers, how the protection system will improve and understand the crucial lessons learned since the first projects with IEC 61850 in 2004, all through interactive training, live demos and hands-on exercises.

Monday, 25 April 2016 at 9:00 AM - Friday, 29 April 2016 at 5:00 PM (EDT)

Le Nordelec - 1751 rue Richardson, Suite 4312 Montréal, QC H3K 1G6 CA

Click HERE for more details and registration information.

See you there.

ENTSO-E publishes November 2015 news on IEC 61850

ENTSO-E seems to be quite happy with:

1. the level of interoperability many different vendors’ subsystems to be applied within the TSO system management architecture.
2. the status of the standardization within IEC TC 57 WG 10, WG 17 and WG 18.

ENTSO-E just published a brief report on the

IOP 2015, organized by UCA International User Group (Iug) in Brussels, Hotel Crowne Plaza, 26.9-2.10

IEC TC57 WG10(-17-18) meetings, hosted by and at ENTSO-E premises, Brussels , 5.-9.10.

Click HERE to read the summary on the two events.

Growth of Substation Automation with IEC 61850

There seems to be an ongoing interest in doing market studies in order to figure out what will be the technologies applied in power system automation in the next years or decades. One of the latest is the following report:

"The World Market for Substation Automation and Integration Programs in Electric Utilities: 2011-2013." by Newton-Evans Research Company

Click HERE for a brief news information found on the Newton-Evans website.
Click HERE for some details from the report from Business Wire.

The number of systems installed in the electrical power delivery systems is much bigger than what these kind of studies show. The news reports: "Respondents indicated a total of 1,567 transmission substations and 5,154 distribution substations in operation as of the 4th quarter of 2010. These represent a 9% sample of U.S. and Canadian combined totals of transmission voltage substations and nearly 10% of all distribution voltage substations."

The power market is a global market - the potential market for IEC 61850 is global as well! The numbers of applications is in the Millions! Check what Enel reported during the recent first European IEEE Smart Grid conference in Gothenburg (Sweden): Enel owns over 0.4 MILLION MV/LV Substations! HV and MV network are remotely operated, more than 0.1 MILLION MV substations remote controlled ... There is a potential of 0.3 MILLION LV substations where IEC 61850 one way or the other may be used in the next decade.

One of Enel's project deals with even more potential use cases of IEC 61850:

Active Control of Distributed Energy Resources (DER) connected to the Medium Voltage network: The project will deal with:

• Realizing an advanced control system
• Implementing an “always on” and standard-based communication solution connecting all the relevant nodes in the network, including DER locations.
• Implementing Voltage Control (at all nodes) and Power Flow Control in the MV network.

Click HERE for the complete presentation by Enel.

Take, for example, the number of PV inverter manufactured monthly by one vendor: SMA (Germany):

"On the reporting date, SMA had a maximum annual production capacity of approx. 11 GW worldwide. This corresponds to a doubling in annual production capacity in comparison to the end of 2009. Owing to the better availability of electronic components, SMA was able to utilize almost fully its existing production capacities in the third quarter of 2010 with an inverter output sold of nearly 2.6 GW. In the first nine months, SMA sold inverter output of 5,738 MW in total" ... I guess this means some 500.000 PV Inverters from one manufacturer (assuming average inverter of 20 kW) !!

Click HERE for the SMA news report.

Taking the monitoring, control and automation needs reported by Enel (above) into account means: there is a potential global market of MILLIONS of devices per year that need "standard-based communication". IEC 61850 has almost everything needed.

In this light we have to look at what Newton-Evans figured out:

"Of 5,154 distribution substations in operation at participating utilities, nearly 36% were reported to be without any automation. Just over one-half (52%) of these distribution substations were classified as Stage 1 sites (having some IEDs, RTUs, and two-way communications). About 12% were reported to be “fully automated.”"

When we talk about "standard-based communication", we have to use a wide-angle lens - not a zoom lens to focus on some substations in the U.S. There are definitely a lot more of opportunities globally!

There is a bright future for IEC 61850!

NERC - Supports IEC 61850 to keep the Transmission and Distribution Grid reliable

NERC (North American Reliability Corporation) has just published an interesting comprehensive analysis of the impact of Smart Grids on the reliability of the transmission grids:

Reliability Considerations from Integration of Smart Grid
December 2010

The report recommends that the interoperability of devices and systems is one of the crucial issues in future electric power systems - including industrial sites and buildings. There is obviously one standard that supports the interoperability to a high extend on all voltage levels: IEC 61850.

On page 82 the report states: "An important example of why smart grid standards need to recognize the interoperability between equipments used in transmission and distribution, is the requirement of mapping of Distributed Network Protocol 3 (DNP3) with IEC 61850. DNP3 is the legacy communication protocol that is followed for large volume data exchanges between equipment. However, IEC 61850 is recognized to be a better standard suited for smart grid communications. To bridge the gap between the legacy DNP3 protocols and the newer IEC 61850, a mapping is required when exchanging certain data types. The goal is to ensure that data are seamlessly transported between devices regardless of their adopted communication standards. DNP3 has recently been adopted in IEEE Standard 1815. An IEEE standard and an SGIP PAP working group are currently supporting the mapping effort between IEC 61850 and the IEEE 1815/DNP3 standards."

Click HERE to download the full NERC report.

Free One Day Workshop on IEC 61850 (IEC 61400-25) in Montreal

A free Workshop on IEC 61850 (IEC 61400-25) will be conducted in Montreal (Canada) next week:

Thursday, September 30, 2010; 8:30 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.

The Workshop will take place at Hydro-Québec head office in Montreal.

The workshop will be an open presentation and discussion of crucial aspects of the standard IEC 61850 and especially of IEC 61850-7-420; a demonstration of the latest development of the “IEC61850@CHIP” and first experiences with the small platform especially for PV systems will be given.

08:30 – 09:00	Welcome, roll call of attendees, expectations
09:00 – 09.30	The standardization organizations (IEC TC 57, IEEE, IEC TC 88, …)
09:30 – 10:30	Introduction into information modeling, models, information exchange, configuration language (IEC 61850-7-x and IEC 61400-25)
10:30 – 10:50	Coffee break
10:50 – 11:30	Implementations and market penetration of IEC 61850
11:30 – 12:30	Presentation of SystemCorp’s IEC 61850 Stack PIS-10, integration of the stack on Beck IPC Chip, and demonstration of Development Kit DK61 (HW and SW) and IEC 61850 DLL running on PCs
12:30 – 13:30	Lunch (invited by H-Q)
13:30 – 15:00	Question & Answer Session
15:00	End of workshop

There are a very few seats left.

If you are interested to attend, please let me know as soon as possible (latest by Friday, 24 September 2010) - schwarz@scc-online.de

European Roadmap - More Euros for Smart Grids

The European Electricity Grid Initiative (EEGI) has published a Roadmap for the years 2010-18 and a Detailed Implementation Plan 2010-12; with proposals how many Euros to spend.

The EEGI has proposed a nine-year European research, development and demonstration (RD&D) program initiated by electricity transmission and distribution network operators to accelerate innovation and the development of the electricity networks of the future in Europe.

The following statement is great: "The proposed RD&D program focuses on system innovation rather than on technology innovation." Yes, the time to develop crucial Technologies was during the years 2000 and 2010. Several basic Technologies like the international communication standards IEC 61850, IEC 61400-25, IEC 62351, IEC 61968, and IEC 61970 are published AND IMPLEMENTED in many devices - ready to build SYSTEMS.

The time has come to USE these standards and devices - rather than start again discussing protocols again and again ... like in the nineties ...

Planned investments for monitoring, communication, ... automation are:

Start	Function	Budget
2012	Improved planning, monitoring and control of LV networks	100 M€
2011	Automation and control of MV network	90 M€
2012	Integrated Communication Solutions	50 M€
2011	Joint Task force on IT system protocols and standards (DSO driven)	19 M€

Click HERE to download the Roadmap.

Interoperability for Intelligent Devices for Transportation

A very comprehensive set of standards for information models and information exchange has been published for ITS (Intelligent Transportation Systems; defined and used in the U.S.). One crucial objective is to reach Interoperability: "A standards-based approach to integration helps to facilitate the exchange of transportation data as well as more easily accommodate future equipment replacements, systems upgrades, and system expansions."

The standard NTCIP 1213, for example, defines a couple of information models that are also defined in IEC 61850.

NTCIP 1213 v02.19 (National Transportation Communications for ITS Protocol -- Object Definitions for Electrical and Lighting Management
Systems (ELMS))

Examples of three phase voltages for Delta and Y, current and power:

BranchcircuitEntry::= SEQUENCE {
...
branchcircuitVoltageAB INTEGER,
branchcircuitVoltageBC INTEGER,
branchcircuitVoltageCA INTEGER,
branchcircuitVoltageAN INTEGER,
branchcircuitVoltageBN INTEGER,
branchcircuitVoltageCN INTEGER,
branchcircuitCurrent   INTEGER,
branchcircuitPower     INTEGER
...
}

These models are mapped to MIB (SNMP) and communicated, e.g., in ASN.1 BER - as is the case for IEC 61850-8-1. It would be nice to use the IEC 61850-7-4 MMXU (three phase electrical measurements for all applications - independent of transportation, distribution, generation, ...).

Smart Power Distribution Grids will have a lot of relations to Transportation Systems and vice versa.
No Power System - NO Transportation!

The NIST Smart Grid activities list the NTCIP part 1213 in the SGIP Identified Standards (number 31).

Click HERE for the ITS website ... provides free access to model and protocol standards, e.g. part 1213 can be accessed for free (registration required).
Click HERE for more information on the ITS Standards Background.

Interoperability, secure Investments and IEC

While some 50 IEC TC 57 experts from all over were meeting in Los Angeles this week to work on Interoperability Standards, the US Government announced a Comprehensive Energy Plan. One objective of the plan is to "support $ 32 Billion in loan guarantees and create $40-50 Billion in project investments" another is to "providing $750 million to accelerate conventional renewable energy projects" ... many dollars will be used to develop and use interoperable information and communication standards.

The information and communication technology for the Smart(er) Grids requires a high level of syntactic and semantic interoperability of the various products, solutions and systems that build up the future power system. Furthermore the specific requirements like long term investment security in existing interoperability standards (like IEC 61850, IEC 60870-5, IEC 61968/70, DNP3, ...) and legacy systems must be considered. These two rationales - interoperability and investment security - make it absolutely necessary to base all developments and investment of Billions of Dollar or Euros on a sound framework of sustainable interoperability standards. IEC and especially IEC TC 57 are developing crucial elements of this framework.

Click HERE for the US Government press release (2009-10-07)
Click HERE for the US Government presentation (2009-10-07)
Click HERE for IEC TC 57 Scope (Power systems management and associated information exchange)
Click HERE for the list of experts of WG 19 "Interoperability within TC 57 in the long term"
Click HERE for information on the IEC Special Group on Smart Grids (SG 3).

Interoperable Standards for Smart Grid: US$ 8.5 million for two year support to get there

The Smart Grid in the U.S. (and all over!) relies on information and networking technologies to allow advanced control and communication capabilities. "It is a key component of President Obama’s plans to achieve energy independence and to address climate change.", according to NIST.

NIST has awarded EnerNex (based in Knoxville, TN, USA) to help in developing "Smart Grid interoperability standards" and helping in standards "harmonization effort". Under the US$ 8.5 million contract, EnerNex will help NIST during the next two years to reach a higher level of interoperability of systems and devices needed for a smart(er) electric power delivery system.

Many people in charge of the U.S. power delivery system - obviously - have understood the importance of a sustainable Interoperability in the utility domain.

Two crucial "interoperability projects" have been run by EPRI many years ago: UCA 1.0 and UCA 2.0. The UCA 2.0 was taken over by IEC TC 57 as the foundation of IEC 61850 and IEC 61400-25. The GREAT cooperation between the North American experts and experts from all over has let to the BIG success of UCA 2.0 - which is (of course) now IEC 61850.

Click HERE for a comparison of UCA 2.0 and IEC 61850.

I would appreciate if the history would repeat: The development of the many standards for a SMART(er) GRID will be done by international cooperation for a global market!! The need for smarter systems is an international requirement - to the good of human beings and the nature - in Russia, Germany, USA, Australia, ... Smart experts at TERNA (the Italian TSO) have already started to make the Italian Transmission Grid smarter with IEC 61850:

... and some 350 Indian experts have been trained on IEC 61850 in a three day event in Bangalore:

And how are you getting involved? With the help of real experts you can speed up your knowledge in international smart grid standards very fast - ask the right experts during the upcoming IEC 61850 events in Frankfurt, San Antonio, Nürnberg, Brisbane and Sydney, ...

2nd IEC 61850 Training Session in Moscow NOW WITH Hands-on Training, 01.-04. September 2009

The second comprehensive training on IEC 61850 in Moscow (Russia) has been extended from three to four days - adding a hands-on training with real IEDs from Areva, Siemens, SEL, GE, ... the event will be held in Moscow (Russia) from 01.-04. September 2009. The the first three days will be conducted by NettedAutomation (Karlsruhe, Germany), the hands-on training will be performed by STRI (Ludvika, Sweden).

Click HERE [pdf in Russian] for program details and registration form.

Click HERE for a brief report on the the first event in March 2009.

I look forward to meeting you soon in Moscow.

U.S. 2010 Energy and Water Appropriations: some $27 billion

According to a recent press release of the U.S. Committee on Appropriations the U.S. Department of Energy will have some $27 billion funding for 2010: "The Energy and Water Appropriations Bill is a key part of ongoing efforts to meet the infrastructure needs of the country and, after years of neglect, addressing the inadequacies of our national energy policies. This bill invests in new technologies, scientific research, and conservation efforts that will provide long term solutions to our energy needs and create jobs. ... And it continues to invest in the development of a new “smart grid” to ensure electricity delivery and energy reliability."

Excerpt of the Summary:

Total funding: DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY = $26.9 billion !!

- Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy: $2.25 billion

- Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability : $208 million:

• Smart Grid Technologies: $62.9 million, $30 million above 2009, for smart grid research and
  development.
• Energy Storage: $15 million, more than triple 2009, for research and development of grid-connected
  energy storage technologies.
• Cyber Security: $46.5 million for energy delivery cyber security, an increase of $34.5 million from
  2009, to develop secure grid technologies as cyber attacks increase worldwide and the grid becomes
  increasingly network-connected.
• Clean Energy Transmission and Reliability: $42 million to increase the efficiency of the grid and
  enable the widespread deployment of clean, domestic renewable energy.

- ...

Click HERE for the complete official Summary.

What is your Government providing? The German Government funds many projects. E.g., the E-Energy projects ... project budgets of some € 140 million for a 4-year term ... some € 35 million per year.

Click HERE for executive information on the E-Energy projects.

ENTSO-E: European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity

 

The organizations ATSOI, BALTSO, ETSO, NORDEL, UCTE and UKTSOA have been fully integrated into ENTSO-E since July 2009. The ENTSO-E is now fully operational.

The objectives of the new organization is: "Promote the reliable operation, optimal management and sound technical evolution of the European electricity transmission system in order to ensure security of supply and to meet the needs of the Internal Energy Market."

42 TSOs from 34 countries are members in the ENTSO-E.

ENTSO-E – EC Workshop on “Critical Infrastructure Protection” for Transmission Grid

The workshop on Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) for electricity transmission networks was held on 15/16 June 2009 in Cologne, Germany. ENTSO-E and the European Commission jointly organized the workshop. This workshop was an important platform for experts of European TSOs and other organizations involved in security issues.

Click HERE [pdf] to download the agenda and HERE to download the presentations [zip].