Wednesday at Hannover Messe

Today (10 April 2013) was the busiest of the first three days. People … people, people walked the rows. Even more people than the other days stopped at the booth of TQ Systems, Beck IPC and SystemCorp. There was a huge interest in learning how to get IEC 61850, IEC 61400-25, IEC 60870-5-104, DNP3, Modbus … integrated into IEDs.

One of the most interesting questions asked today was from a small company that was looking for IEC 61850 software to be included for a substation switchgear drive system. The person I talked to said: IEC 61850 is very complex and we have figured out that the integration would cost some 100,000 Euro (one hundred thousand!) !! He asked me about my opinion.

My response was: It could be even more than 100.000 Euro – if you do it wrong! But it could be in the range of less than a tenth of that amount: some 5.000 Euro may be sufficient to get it running and integrated in the application … it all depends …

The Alarm Annunciator system developed by EES (Backnang, Germany) is one of the companies that recently implemented IEC 61850 within a few days … this integration proves that it is feasible in very short time.

Detlef Raddatz (SystemCorp, left) and Uwe Scholz (EES) in front of the display that shows the topology:

… it’s me (left) …

EES presented a nice “power box” that promised that you reach the “finishing line” with IEC 61850 faster than without!

TQ System’s products were well received by many visitors.

Some companies were quite fast in immediately ordering the IEC 61850 stack/API solution during the fair – there is a lot of pressure in various markets to make smart IEDs speaking IEC 61850 and IEC 61400-25 … fast-to-market and at a reasonable price.

What happened today at Hannover Messe?

The second day at the Hannover Messe was a quite interesting one. Many people came by and asked for IEC 61850 to be applied for building SYSTEMS that help to bring together PV Power, storages, Combined Heat and Power, Loads, Heating systems, … The time has come where many more people are looking for support to integrate many of these individual “pieces” into smarter systems!

IEC 61850 is about to play a major role in this regard. Many interested companies showed up and asked for a simple and easy integration of IEC 61850 into their applications (devices) … After a first wave of devices that used IEC 61850 one way or the other (roughly from 2004 to 2012), there is now a new wave coming that requires simple and easy to integrate solutions.

I have heard from several experts that they have tried to use IEC 61850 the recent years – and failed because it was too costly for their applications. Many of them are now back and checking again to get IEC 61850 integrated into their IEDs. Guess they will get what they are looking for. Most of them want just to use IEC 61850 – not struggle with the implementation (integration) of it.

More to come tomorrow and the other days. Many people have reported that IEC 61850 is an issue at many more booths in 2013 than last year.