As per October 2015 the following tester are offering Conformance Tests for products implementing IEC 61850:
For further details on the companies or on IEC 61850 testing capability visit:
www.ucaiug.org Testing/ UCAIug Testing Quality Assurance Program.
The approved testers are listed in the directory: UCAIug IEC 61850 Approved Testers
Almost 600 Certificates have been issued by the UCAIUG Users Group.
The workshop on IEC 61400-25 (IEC 61850 extensions for wind turbines) at Senvion (former RePower, Hamburg) was a very big success! The 40 attendees appreciated the high level of presentations on several aspects of the standard: Information Models, Modeling, Information exchange services, Mappings, Applications, solutions, testing, and certification.
The USE61400-25 Users Group was very active in promoting the standard and how to reach a high level of interoperability and – of course – conformity!
It is very likely that this workshop has inspired several people present that are not yet members of the Users Group.
Membership in this Users Group provides an excellent platform to exchange experiences, educate experts, to support the standardization process, and the testing of devices.
Check the Users Groups website for news – you will find also news about the wind power applications on this blog. Several people thanked me for the great content they find on this blog! You are welcome!
Stay tuned.
IEC 61850 defines several aspects on how devices interoperate and how the interoperation is engineered and guaranteed to run in multiple vendor projects. Earlier this year we have seen a public statement by ENTSO-E on the use of IEC 61850 compliant devices and tools.
Another huge organization has added to the ENTSO-E statement: The Very Large Power Grid Operators (VLPGO). The “association of the 16 largest Power Grid Operators serving more than 70% of the electricity demand in the world and providing electricity to 3 billion consumers”.
I guess this is true – then I would expect that these 16 power grid operators could easily “control” what vendors have to deliver – deliver IEC 61850 compliant solutions that meet the needs of these companies!! And they could have an appropriate influence on the standardization work.
Download the VLPGO statement on IEC 61850.
Instead of purchasing what they really want and need, they complain about the standardization groups: that the standardization organizations “should from the PGO perspective be more directive within the standard.
They should not allow different suppliers
to implement standards differently.
In particular, a strong standardization degree at the interfaces between tools (vendor specific or third-party) is required. Moreover, stability, or at least backward compatibility of the standard should be guaranteed. … Consequently, we would like to strongly suggest to all IEC61850 stakeholders to take the appropriate actions in order to ensure the success of IEC61850 and to make sure the standard – and the technologies developed around it – remain sustainable and provide significant benefits for all stakeholders and the community.”
I am wondering that (obviously) the few utilities that deliver 70% of the electric demand have an interesting view on what the IEC TC 57 (and other groups) could manage and gain.
IEC COULD NOT control what and how vendors implement
and what users use!!
This could (more or less) easily be controlled by the user communities: by just purchasing products that meet the users’ requirements only. Why did the many utilities purchase automation systems that did – to some degree – not meet their requirements? Were they not precisely specified or did they not understand how to write the specifications? Or? My experience is that in many cases the technical people of utilities had not been involved in purchasing IEC 61850 based systems! Several utilities hired me for a training of their engineers AFTER they the vendors commissioned the systems. Engineers told me that they were responsible for the service and maintenance of the systems – having NO CLUE what IEC 61850 is!!
Engineers of a well known group of large utilities in Europe told me some two years ago that they were not allowed to conduct lab tests or build pilot projects … in one case a utility expert told me that they had to stop their special group of experts on IEC 61850 to get prepared for the new technology – instead their management believed that the vendors do all things right.
There is a saying: “Pay now or pay later”. From the perspective of the years 2000-2002 utilities refused to “pay” for the standardization and for “controlling” the implementation into products. They have decided to “pay” later: 2012, 2013, … I look forward to see them paying.
Back to the standardization: IEC standardization work is a democratic process and: the work is done by people attending the meetings and contributing to the technical work. If the user communities would have been shown up more often and contributed to the technical to a higher degree, then we would not see these statements flying around today. The users (especially the 16 BIG ONES in the VLPGO) should GET INVOLVED (by letting their experts getting more deeply involved or by providing resources for people that are already involved …) instead of “strongly suggest to all IEC61850 stakeholders to take the appropriate actions in order to ensure the success of IEC61850 and to make sure …”.
I would have expected a statement like this: “VLPGO member companies offer increased and appropriate resources (many more experts getting involved and funding Millions of Dollar or Euro for common activities) in order to ensure the success of IEC61850 and to make sure …”. The VLPGO member companies – somehow – have to provide more resources than it was the case in the last 10 years or so.
It is time to educate more people from the many stakeholders to understand how IEC standards are defined and what it means to have a standard published. The standardization groups can lead the horse to the water – but they cannot make the horse drink the water!
Vendors, users, system integrators, and consultants should work more closely together to make sure that everybody gets a benefit from the standard. One possibility to support this goal could be to set-up a European Users Group for IEC 61850! This group could be a subsidiary of the UCAIUG – it would be easier (especially for utility experts) to travel within Europe than across the Atlantic. By the way, the UCAIUG is – from my point of view – more a Vendors Group!
Finally: The vendors have spent a lot of time and money in defining the standards and to implement them!!! Thanks a lot for their engagement! Keep going!
The USE61400-25 user group’s main objective is to ease the use of IEC 61400-25 and support users implementing the standard within the wind power industry:
There has a new group on IEC 61400-25 been created at LinkedIn
Note that IEC 61400-25 is build on IEC 61850. The crucial parts of IEC 61850, e.g., IEC 61850-7-2, –7-3, –7-4, –6, and –8-1 and various communication stacks and APIs can be re-used for most of the applications of wind power applications.
There is some crucial work going on to coordinate the future revision of IEC 61400-25 with IEC 61850.
IEC 61400-25 is also a topic on the training courses conducted at the Remote Conference in Denver (CO) on September 18/19, 2012 and in Frankfurt/M (Germany) on October 17-19, 2012:
More details on the IEC 61850/61400-25 training sessions.
NettedAutomation has also a booth the Remote Conference and Exhibition (booth #45) showing several software and hardware solutions for IEc 61850 and IEC 61400-25 (stack software, API, gateway between DNP3/Modbus/IEC60870-5-104 and IEC 61850, other embedded controller).
Many experts of he Wind Power Users Group "USE61400-25" for IEC 61400-25 (IEC 61850) met in Fredericia (Denmark) on Monday (2011-01-17) to report and discuss experiences with the application of IEC 61400-25/61850 for Wind Turbines. 28 experts (!) from
ABB, AREVA Wind, Bachmann Electronic, DONG Energy
ENERCON, Ingeteam Technology, KEMA, Kenersys,
Mita-Teknik, Natcon7, NettedAutomation,
RE Power Systems AG, Siemens Wind Power,
Vattenfall, Vestas
met and shared the very positive experiences with the standards ... and discussed issues that need modifications and corrections.
Most of these experts met with IEC TC 57 WG 17 (DER) on Tuesday (2011-01-18): 39 people had been in the meeting on Tuesday to share their experiences on Wind Power and DER. WG 17 met until 2011-01-21.
The UCA International Users Group (UCAIug) has approved seven
IEC 61850 Test Labs (as of 21 July 2010):
ABB Switzerland Ltd
Server: Level B
American Electric Power (AEP)
Dolan Technology/Testing Center
Client and Server: Level A
AREVA T&D UK Ltd,
Substation Automation Solutions
Server: Level B
KEMA Nederland BV
Client and Server: Level A
NARI-RELAYS Electric Co., Ltd., Nanjing, China
Server: Level B
Xuchang KETOP Electrical Apparatus
Testing & Research Institute, Henan, China
Server: Level B
Additional labs are underway.
A total of 155 certified products are listed at the UCAIUG website.
Several paper presentation are scheduled for the DistribuTech 09 conference in San Diego, 03.-05. February 2009
List of IEC 61850 related papers
Meet the IEC 61850 experts at the UCAIug booth #447
See you there.
The UCA International Users Group (UCAIug) has a new website.
The UCAIug is a not-for-profit corporation focused on assisting users and vendors in the deployment of standards for real-time applications for several industries with related requirements. The UCAIug as well as its member groups (CIMug, Open Smart Grid, and IEC 61850) draws its membership from utility user and supplier companies.
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