OSCE publication on Energy Infrastructure Protection

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has published a comprehensive report titled:

Good Practices Guide on Non-Nuclear Critical Energy Infrastructure Protection (NNCEIP) from Terrorist Attacks Focusing on Threats Emanating from Cyberspace

The 100 page Guide is a very comprehensive document that states at the beginning that “The importance of energy security and energy infrastructure security cannot be overstated. It is among the most serious security, economic and environmental challenges of both today, and the future.”

The report is worth to read – but it would be more important if vendors and users of the energy infrastructure and the energy automation infrastructure would increase investments in implementing the basic measures to secure both systems. Unfortunately the implementation of these measures are not a business case to increase the profit of an utility!

The challenge with the future energy infrastructure is this: to manage the Cost and Lost. Both infrastructures (energy and energy automation) will require huge amount of investment to keep the energy delivery stable, secure, reliable, and resilient (Cost) and deal with more renewable energy (Lost in the sense of relative reduction of traditional bulk generation and transmission).

Almost everything about security has been said – but not by everybody. Let’s move on with more implementations of security measures.

Click HERE for the complete guide.

Introduction to IEC 61850 – two Papers available for download

Karlheinz Schwarz (SCC) has presented two papers on IEC 61850 in Macau (2008). The papers can now be downloaded for free:

The first document gives an overview about the common aspects of the new international standard series IEC 61850 and how it is applied and extended to meet the requirements for al-most the whole electrical energy supply chain. It discusses the reduction of total life cycle cost of power utility automation systems using standard compliant devices, communication and tools.

IEC 61850 beyond Substations – The Standard for the whole Energy Supply System [pdf, 174 KB]

The second document gives an overview about the application of the new international standard series IEC 61850 and IEC 61400-25 for condition monitoring of primary equipment and monitoring of any process information. It discusses the basic monitoring concepts of IEC 61850 using the many information models (status information and measurements) and communication services for reporting, logging, GOOSE, sampled values, and recording

Advanced Condition Monitoring of Primary Equipment with the Standard Series IEC 61850 AND IEC 61400-25 [pdf, 432 KB]

.

Cyber Security issues for the Energy Systems

The U.S. Rice University has published a report on cyber security issues for the U.S. energy systems. This report repeats saying that the industry needs to do something – guess that is very true.

Here is the report on Cyber Security.

IEC 61850 at 17. Kasseler Symposium Energie-Systemtechnik

The 17. Kasseler Symposium Energie-Systemtechnik will be held in Kassel (Germany) on 11.-12. October 2012. One of the various issue is the information and communication technology and the extended focus on electricity, gas and heating systems that are understood to form “Hybrid Grids”.

IEC 61850 will be discussed in the presentation “Standardisierte Anbindung von Anlagen nach IEC 61850” (Standardized connection of plants according to IEC 61850) by Martin Winter, SIEMENS AG.

The complete Program (German and English) can be downloaded.

Online registration.

I look forward to meeting you there. Want to discuss any IEC 61850, IEC 61400-25 or IEC 60870-5-104 related issue, let me know please.

Long-Term Solutions for The Transition of Energy System Needed

Energy supply systems have a long lifetime (30 … 40 … 50+ years). Electric energy is flowing trough generators, wires, transformer, switchgears, motors, and other loads; gas and heat is flowing through tubes … The energy is usually flowing top-down today. In the future we will have to manage energy flow top-down, bottom-up, back and forth, converted between …

The transition of the energy system as planned today, will take decades to happen. According to Eberhard Umbach, the president of the KIT (Karlsruher Instituts für Technologie) it would be a great success, if we could get started within the next 10 years (Read in the News [German]).

“Der Präsident des Karlsruher Instituts für Technologie (KIT) hat Zweifel am Gelingen der Energiewende und dem Ausbau der Windenergie im Südwesten. "Das größte Problem ist, dass wir künftig dezentrale Netze brauchen, die separat geregelt werden und miteinander verknüpft sind", sagte Eberhard Umbach der "Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung" (Montag).

Ein Aspekt werde von den Politikern derzeit weitgehend ignoriert, sagte Umbach: "Zur Steuerung der dezentralen Netze fehlt uns heute die entsprechende Informationstechnologie einschließlich entsprechender Sicherheitsmaßnahmen, da reicht es nicht, ein paar neue Programme zu schreiben." Wenn innerhalb der nächsten zehn Jahre erste Schritte gelängen, so Umbach, dann "wären wir sehr gut".

That means for the information and information exchange infrastructure that it has to stay (standardized one way or the other) for some 30 … 50 years. It is unlikely to replace a comprehensive infrastructure, that is required for the future hybrid energy system, every 10 years or so. In the manufacturing domain (car production, …) it is likely that a factory will be upgraded to a new “standard” every 7 to 10 years.

So, we have some years left to do large scale deployments of the basic information and information exchange infrastructure for the hybrid energy system of the future.

The basic definitions that can be used today, in 10 or even in 30 years are the IEC 61968/70 (CIM) and IEC 61850. The crucial parts of these standard series are independent of implementation technologies: models of a generators, measurements of the electrical 3-phase system or power quality information are semantic models that could be used forever. A “phase A current” is a “phase A current” today and in 40 years.

There is one issue here: How could I figure out which models exist? Good question!

Click HERE for the list of 280+ Logical nodes (2010).