Is Industry 4.0 Really a Revolution? And IEC 61850?

There are so many discussions, concerns, arguments ... Pros and Cons regarding Industry 4.0 or the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4.0, IoT, IIoT, Cloud, Edge, data lake, ...).

The most remarkable statements I have heard are from Mr. Ralph Langner who does not believe that it is a revolution at all ...

"Is Industrie 4.0 actually the 4th Industrial Revolution as touted by it's many proponents. Ralph Langner tackles that question in this 20 minute video from S4xEurope."

Click HERE for the youtube video of his presentation (20 min)

Please find some personal opinions:

Please find a paper discussing the "sprint" versus "marathon" in automation of electric power systems I wrote in 2012 through the following post:

http://blog.nettedautomation.com/2012/03/smart-grids-19th-century-invention.html

Here is part of my experience:

I was (as a 21 year old skilled worker in 1973 ... just married) responsible for maintaining a fire alarm system with 6,000 alarm buttons (from a famous vendor ... full of TTL chips ...). The system stopped almost every night ... I had to drive downhill 60 km ... to switch it off and on and go back home ... I was not skilled enough to do anything serious about it ... just wrote reports to my boss ... he ignored everything ... I quit my job in 1974 and went back to high school in January 1995 and university in 1977 ... 7 1/2 years later I finished university with four kids in 1982 ... went back to that same company ... quit again in 1992 partly, in 1997 completely ...

The most crucial reason to quit in 1992/1997 was: The standardization of industrial communication systems in IEC TC 65 released a myriad of non-interoperable Fieldbusses ... good for selling standards ... very BAD for maintenance people and many others ... can you imagine to be an expert in tens of fieldbusses?!

Check out this post:
http://blog.nettedautomation.com/2017/04/iec-sc-65c-published-5000-pages-of-new.html

Oh my dear ...

I just checked my personal records from the 70s and found the weekly reports of my daily maintenance activities ... spent many days to switch off/on the Fire Alarm System ...

This may happen every hour these days where maintenance people just switch IEDs off and on ... in the hope that it will work after restart.

We need more well educated and skilled experts!!! ... grey hair seniors ...

What's about IEC 61850? Is the introduction of this standard series different compared to the fieldbus standard series IE 61158? Sure ... there is a crucial difference:

MANY Fieldbus standards for ONE application (real-time data exchange) ...

ONE IEC 61850 for MANY applications (real-time, protection, asset data, configuration, engineering, ...SCADA, ...).

IEC 61850 series is quite comprehensive and complex ... Yes. But: it seems to be easier to learn and experience ONE complex standard than to do this for 50+ solutions!! IEC 61850 is not a revolution - it could be used to extend existing solutions ... it provides a new approach that could prevent the proliferation of hundreds of vendor-specific solutions ...

And when it comes to security, there is ONE standard series (IEC 62351) for IEC 61850, IEC 60870-6 (TASE.2), IEC 60870-5-104, DNP3, ... 

The IEC 61850 Tissue Database is a Great Resource of Hints and Background Information

The IEC 61850 tissue database is a comprehensive resource of hints and background information that can help you to understand why a particular change or correction has been implemented:
https://iec61850.tissue-db.com

Many tissues are posted that end up in the category "blue" (This is a question only). The discussion of the experts is often very helpful ... here you find answers that you may not get from the original published documents.
Example of discussion:
https://iec61850.tissue-db.com/tissue/1649



Enjoy the tissue database. As a registered user you can post tissues and see more details.

Dubai (UAE): NEW IEC 61850 Seminar for Protection, Control, and Generation

You are invited to register for one of the world leading IEC 61850 Seminars for Protection, Control, and Generation to be conducted by

FMTP, Al-Ojaimi, and NettedAutomation 
in Dubai (UAE) at the Sheraton Dubai Mall of the Emirates
11-13 July 2017

With the focus on protection and control in HV/MV substations, power generation (PV, Wind, DER, Hydro), distribution systems using Client/Server, GOOSE, SV, SCADA and SCL Language covering:

• IEC 61850 / IEC 61400-25 Introduction (Edition 1, 2, and 2.1) and experience after more than 10 years in operation. Where are we today?
• Return of experience, applications and practical demonstrations:
• Protection and Control in Substation Automation
• Engineering and Configuration
• Maintenance
• Monitoring and SCADA system
• Specification of the IEC 61850 protection and control system.
• Through the practical demonstrations, you will learn:
• To handle IEC 61850 relay protections from different vendors and their software tools; to be able to efficiently manage flexibility in engineering and interoperability.
• To use the state of the art IEC 61850 testing tools and equipment to efficiently detect the technical problems and work-out their solutions.
• To understand SCL files, setup clients and servers for MMS communication to SCADA and RTU Systems
• All the presentations are supported by practical examples or demonstrations.

Who should attend?

• Protection and Electrical Engineers (protection, control, engineering, SCADA, asset managers)
• System integrators
• Product managers of vendors
• R&D engineers
• Maintenance personnel
• Experts responsible for network infrastructure

Click HERE for program and registration information.
Click HERE for other training opportunities.

Check the Latest in IEC 61850 Testing Tools during the IEC IEEE PES T&D in Dallas (TX)

Mingle at the GridEx® Smart Grid Product Release- IEEE T&D 2016

FMTP (Sweden) welcomes YOU to meet with their experts in the casual atmosphere of the Rustic (just a few miles away from IEEE PES T&D in Huston (TX)) for food, drinks and the reveal of FMTP Power latest product GridEx® on Wednesday, May 4, 2016, at 8:00 p.m.

GridEx®, a digital multimeter for Smart Grids, bridges the gap between traditional power technology and new digital communication (models, GOOSE, Sampled Values, SCL, ...). Complex data is translated into easily understandable information to support decisions for increased reliability and improved system utilization.

Click HERE to register for the product presentation of GridEx®.

IEC 61400-25 and IEC 61850 for Semantic models in Integrated Operations for Oil & Gas and New Energy

In 2010 Billam Rajashekar Reddy (Norway) analyzed several semantic models for information exchange supporting operations and maintenance :

“Use of Semantic models in Integrated Operations for Oil & Gas and New Energy”

He looked into many solutions like:

• IEC 61400-25 Wind Turbine Communication
• RDS-PP Reference Designation System for Power Plant
• CRM Conceptual Reference Model
• WITSML Well site Information Transfer Standard Mark-up Language
• PRODML Production Markup Language
• RESQML Reservoir Characterization Markup Language
• RDS-PP Reference Designation System for Power Plants
• OPC OLE for process control

The conclusion drawn at the end of the Master’s Thesis says:

“Use of semantic models in integrated operations for oil and gas and new energy includes several methods. We come across all those methods. The IEC 61400-25 series of standards provides the means to get open and easy access to key O&M data. This data is a necessity for making the evaluations and analysis needed to improve operation and maintenance of the wind power plants. The paper has shown how the standard can be implemented and what benefits are associated with its use.
The standard does not restrict nor mandate specific customer-supplier roles, but provides a solution that supports the whole range of business cases where the different actors can cooperate. Both the customer and the supplier can benefit from IEC 61400-25 through decreased costs for data access and system integration. Time and money can instead be put on the development of applications, functions and methods that increase the performance of the wind turbines. ...”

I totally agree with the last sentence in the above quoted conclusion! The information modelling method, huge bunch of information models defined in IEC 61400-25 and IEC 61850, information exchange, communication protocols, system configuration language, … could be used immediately – if you choose a ready-to-go software solution with an easy API.

Spend your time and money in applying the standards! Build interoperable systems that keep the sky blue, the grass green, and the power flowing ;-)

Click HERE to access the master thesis.

Analysis of Indian Power Outage end of July 2012 published the other day

Guess you remember the biggest blackout that ever happened in India end of July 2012 – leaving several 100 Million people without power for some time!

A first comprehensive report has been published:

REPORT OF THE ENQUIRY COMMITTEE
ON GRID DISTURBANCE
IN NORTHERN REGION

16th AUGUST 2012
NEW DELHI

What happened on the 30th and 31st of July? A lot!

The Substation Protection Automation systems, for example, all over worked quite well. The report lists 100+ tripping events of protection devices !! That means many lines were taken out of service in order to protect the lines, switches, transformers, generators, … Before a line is damaged by overload, it is disconnected from the power flow – it operates like a “smart” fuse. Indian people should be thankful that most protection functions worked well.

My summary of the report is:

• Experts figured out that the power delivery systems in India are very huge and very complex.
• Investments to maintain and operate these complex systems and to keep them stable with the growing demand were far too low.
• A list of short, medium and long term actions are suggested to prevent such events in the future.

One issue regarding communication is very interesting, the report states that: “The existing communication network should be maintained properly. RTUs and communication equipments should have uninterrupted power supply with proper battery back up so that in case of total power failure, supervisory commands & control channels do not fail.”

My personal experience in the early 1970s was that battery back up systems are often badly maintained. I was responsible for a brand-new centralized fire alarm system with 6,500 manual fire alarm detectors. The control system crashed at least once a week. As a young man (21) I could not accept that the manufacturer of that huge fire protection system did not act properly to investigate what the problem was; the customer was quite angry. I was too young to do my own deep inside analysis of the problem. I didn’t even have the instruments to do it. So, I quit my job and went back to school and university … and came back to the same company after 7 1/2 years (and father of four kids). I started as an engineer in 1981 – in the area of communication for process automation (IEEE 802.3 Ethernet, IEEE 802.4 Token Bus, MAP, Profibus, … ).

Later somebody reported to me what the cause of the problems of the centralized system was: BADLY MAINTAINED Back-Up Power Supply before it was installed! The batteries were stored in the basement for one year – without anybody keeping an eye on it. The physical laws hit back after the batteries were installed.

A system is as weak as its weakest link.

I guess the results of the investigation are not new. Many engineers have warned all over all the time that more investment is needed to keep the lights on.

Download the complete 70 page report [pdf, 830 KB].

New Parts in IEC 61850 Tissue Database

The following new parts have been added to the tissue database:

Click HERE for Part 4 (2011; Edition 2)
Click HERE for Part 7-1 (2011; Edition 2)
Click HERE for Part 9-2 (2011; Edition 2)

How can you feed back your experience with IEC 61850?

The many parts of the standards series IEC 61850 published require some kind of maintenance. In order to collect, discuss, solve, and document the feedback from the market, IEC TC 57 WG 10 has set-up a database: The Technical Issues database or just: the Tissues database.

More and more experts from utilities feed their experience back to the standardization groups. An example is the latest post of today:

Click HERE for the Tissue #810 on the Logical node RFLO.

In case you find any tissue in the published standards search the Tissue database first and post a new tissue if your tissue has not yet been posted.

Cleanup of IEC 61850-7-4 Edition 2

The edition 2 of the base information models of IEC 61850 (published in 2010 as IEC 61850-7-4) has some definitions that need corrections. You can find the most crucial ones documented on the IEC 61850 Tissue Database (Technical Issues).

Click HERE for the complete list of part 7-4 Ed2.

Example:

Annex A defines the Interpretation of mode and behaviour

There is an obvious error in the table. When Beh=on AND incoming data with q=test THEN the expected behaviour of LN shall be “Processed as invalid”, and not “Processed as valid”.

Recommendation for readers of the various parts of IEC 61850: Please check the list of the Tissue Database in order to figure out the corrections made by the IEC 61850 community. As the above example shows, the corrections could be very critical!

Use of IEC 61400-25 to secure access to key O&M data

Vattenfall (one of the big European power utilities) plans to use IEC 61400-25 (an extension of IEC 61850) for operational and maintenance (service) applications.

Here is the conclusion of the paper:
”The IEC 61400-25 series of standards provides the means to get open and easy access to key O&M data [operation and maintenance data]. This data is a necessity for making the evaluations and analysis needed to improve operation and maintenance of the wind power plants. The paper has shown how the standard can be implemented and what benefits are associated with its use.
The standard does not restrict nor mandate specific customer-supplier roles, but provides a solution that supports the whole range of business cases where the different actors can cooperate. Both the customer and the supplier can benefit from IEC 61400-25 through decreased costs for data access and system integration. Time and money can instead be put on the development of applications, functions and methods that increase the performance of the wind turbines.
Vattenfall considers standards such as IEC 61400-25 to be an important part in the development of the wind power business. The IEC 61400-25 series of standards is therefore part of Vattenfall technical requirements for future procurements.”

The same is true for any other energy resource feeding electric energy into the grid – at any voltage level. The renewable resources and – more general – distributed energy resources (DER) are key for the future electric power delivery system. A government funded project in Germany (EUMONIS: Innovationsallianz zur Entwicklung einer Software- und Systemplattform für Energie- und Umweltmonitoringsysteme) is looking for accessing, storing and using information from the sheer unlimited number of power resources in the near future: PV, CHP, hydro, wind, flying wheels, … One objective is to have information about the status and availability of the resource in a central database, in order to operate and maintain the “distributed Power Plant”. This seems to be one of the crucial challenges in the years to come.

Click HERE to access the complete Vattenfall paper [pdf].
Click HERE for the website of EUMONIS [German].

Did you know that IEC 61400-25 covers also Condition Monitoring needs?

Wind turbines - Part 25-6: Communications for monitoring and control of wind power plants - Logical node classes and data classes for condition monitoring

Click HERE for the preview of part IEC 61400-25-6

System Control & Supervision - and Peopleware

The Washington Post reported on October 23, 2010, that the lack of training could cause very severe situations in the energy transmission and distribution systems. The recent event of the San Bruno gas pipeline burst (that killed several people) has "speed up adoption of a rule to ensure that workers doing similar jobs at companies across the country are well-trained ...".

"If somebody is not trained, it could be very dangerous. If they don't properly respond to an alarm situation, it can cause an explosion. It can
cause leaks. The damage could be very large."

"Although pipeline companies boast an impressive array of technology, he said, at many such firms, "there is a lack of recognition that people
have to operate that equipment.""

My experience after training of more than 2.000 people form more than 500 companies and more than 50 countries with regard to advanced communication and information systems using IEC 61850 is this: There is a very huge lack of recognition that people have to design, engineer, commission, operate, diagnose, and maintain these comprehensive and complex systems in substations and many other applications. More often I see the following: Utilities purchase turnkey systems - without having their own technical people (from the field with many years experience in the power system) consulted or trained to work with the new technology. One year later when the warranty is finished, they have to take over the full responsibility for the whole system! Good luck!

Impact of IEC 61850 on System Engineering, Tools, Peopleware and the Role of the System Integrator: more on that issue in a [paper] and on [slides]

Click HERE for the full report in the Washington Post.

Interoperability and Replacement of an IED by another one

The other day somebody from the user community posted a comment on this blog. The issue discussed is on Interoperability and Replacement of an IEC 61850 compliant IED by another one:

"That is exactly what we users want: not just be able to have different IEDs from (possibly) different vendors cooperating in our substations, but also be able to replace an IED by another one that is functionally equivalent (or superior, or maybe just similar, this being the utilty’s internal issue) regardless of what the other system components are, and in the easiest possible way."

First of all, the Replacement of an IEC 61850 compliant IED mainly depends on the implementation of the standard (which subsets, ..., restrictions) and on the configuration of the system.

Replacement could be very easy but also be a bit complicated. One example shows the impact of the implementation (restriction) and one shows the impact of the configuration.

Restricted implementation: Suppose that an IED A (to be replaced) has 10 Logical Devices to model the application. IED B (to replace IED A) has only the possibility to support five (5) Logical Devices; the restriction is done during the design of the IED.

The system engineer has configured the IEDs and the information flow between them, e.g., the flow from IED A to other IEDs. The designed information flow between IED A and other IEDs is like a Contract. This contract says that IED A has 10 LDs and underlying LNs and DataObjects. The LD name are used to designate the DataObjects; the LN-Reference contains the LD-Name. A DataSet could have members from all 10 LDs (this could be "written" in the contract).

If the IED B has only five (5) LDs then the designation of the DataObjects will likely be different - it requires a modified Contract! The Clients (Subscriber) have to take these changes of the designation into account. This may require a re-configuration of the Clients (Subscriber).

Click HERE for a PIXIT document providing some information about an IED, e.g. restriction of GOOSE messages that can be sent (<= 16) ...

Don' forget: Everything is limited!!

Configuration of the system: Even if IED A and IED B have the same signal designations (same model) it could be that the "old contract" defines a flow as follows: the information to be reported or goosed is defined in a very big DataSet (e.g, of 100+ members). IED B may only support DataSets with a maximum of 50 members. As a consequence the "contract" has to be modified to create two (or more) DataSets and two or more ControlBlocks. The Clients (Subscriber) have to take this into account.

The "easiest possible way" means to apply the same "contract" (flow configuration) for IED A and IED B. If IEDs would be quite flexible with regard to the "contracts" then a replacement would be quite easy.

By the way, the question, which "contract" we could write depends on the vendors' implementations and the way how people configure systems, BUT not on the standard!

The utility requirement could be modified as follows: "to replace an IED by another one that is functionally equivalent (or superior, or maybe just similar, this being the utilty’s internal issue) AND that uses the same "Contract" of the information flow between the two IEDs, regardless of what the other system components are."

Comprehensive IEC 61850 Training - New Opportunities

NettedAutomation GmbH offers new hands-on training and seminar opportunities in 2010:

Public Courses:

02.-05. March 2010	Moscow (Russia)
26.-28. April 2010	Buenos Aires (Argentina)
28.-30. April 2010	Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
05.-07. May 2010	Frankfurt (Germany)
18.-20. August 2010	Paris (France)
22.-24. September 2010	Frankfurt (Germany)
19.-20. October 2010	Dallas (TX, USA)
November 2010	Stockholm (Sweden)

Training Modules: Click HERE for a list of seminar/training modules.
In-House Courses: Click HERE for an example program for a 5 day training conducted in January 2010.

Paper on IEC 61850 and IEC 61400-25 accepted for DistribuTech 2010

The abstract "MONITORING OF POWER SYSTEM AND COMMUNICATION INFRASTRUCTURES BASED ON IEC 61850 AND IEC 61400-25" (by Karlheinz Schwarz) has been accepted for presentation at the DistribuTech 2010 (Tampa, FL, USA).

The focus of the first edition of IEC 61850 was on substation operational aspects (mainly protection and control). Various groups have identified that IEC 61850 is the basis of further applications, e.g., monitoring of functions, processes, primary equipment, and the communication infrastructure in substations and other power system application domains. The second edition and other extensions provide new definitions to keep the high quality and availability of power systems, to reduce commissioning
time and life cycle costs.

Track Assignment: Enterprise Information and Asset Management
Session Assignment: Case Studies of Advanced Applications Extending Benefits of Automation & Control Data
Date: 2010-03-24 (Wednesday)
Time of session: 9:30 AM
Type of Session: paper

Click HERE for the abstract.

Implementations of IEC 61400-25-6

Questions: I work at xx unit of utility-industry in xxx and help some energy companies with their future IT support for the handling of wind power production.
This also leads to some help with the requirements of the position before the contracts. I have a long background from both SCADA and maintenance systems.
Saw on the Internet that you are the project manager for IEC 61400-25-6 for Condition Monitoring and want to ask a few questions I hope you will be friendly to answer.

Question 1: What is the status of the expanded standard for Condition Monitoring IEC 61400-25-6?

The project team TC 88 PT is preparing the so-called FDIS document (final draft international standard). We have our next meeting scheduled for next week at DS in Copenhagen.

I hope that we reach the standard in June or so.

Question 2: How far has the commercial deployment come?

The part 25-6 uses parts 25-2 (many information models for WPP - some can be used for condition monitoring) and 25-4 (service mappings) and IEC 61850. The core software to be implemented is according to IEC 61850 ... IEC 61850 is widely deployed for substation automation systems. Most of the software etc can be re-used for 25 and 25-6.

IEC 61400-25 support is offered by e.g. Beckhoff:

http://iec61850-news.blogspot.com/search?q=beckhoff

and by Bachmann:

http://iec61850-news.blogspot.com/2008/07/bachmann-electronic-mms-server-for-wind.html

Question 3: Which vendors have implemented server and client?

Servers: see above.

Clients are available from various vendors: ABB, Siemens, ...

http://iec61850-news.blogspot.com/search?q=siemens

Question 3: Are there any deployed system? Operating Experience?

A lot with IEC 61850!! Siemens reported that they have installed 50.000+ devices and 1.000+ systems.

Most of these experiences could be applied for wind power applications and especially for condition monitoring.

There is a lot of very good experience!

How Vattenfall wants to benefit from IEC 61400-25

The IEC standard series 61400-25 (Communications for monitoring and control of wind power plants) provides a solution for access to wind power information with standardized data names and semantic. It gives possibilities to procure monitoring and control solutions as separate parts, and to use a single system to store, analyze and present wind power information.

Paper from Vattenfall discusses the potential cost savings - quite interesing:
Use of IEC 61400-25 to secure access to key O&M data

Vattenfall has been involved in the development of the international standard from the very beginning. This paper gives an introduction to the IEC 61400-25 series of standards and presents an overview of the different parts. Furthermore it describes how Vattenfall and other wind power owners and operators can benefit from the standard.