How Does Time Impact Our Life?

 I remember well the discussion on understanding and using UTC Time in IEC 61850 ... a very time consuming discussion. There are still discussions going on ... should UTC be replaced by something else?

Whatever format and scale you are using or inventing ... you will see problems over a longer period of use.

These days we see even cars may have crucial issues with processing of time:

Honda, Acura cars hit by Y2K22 bug that rolls back clocks to 2002:

The report starts with: "Honda and Acura cars have been hit with a Year 2022 bug, aka Y2K22, that resets the navigation system's clock to January 1st, 2002, with no way to change it."

True? Yes, it seems to be true.

A well known issue is related to the year 2038: Year 2038 problem

Many other time formatting and storage bugs!! 

Use the time you have in 2022 to spent more of it for or with your family, friends, ... stay safe in 2022!

Happy new year! 

Lesson learned: Don't expect that more automation, more programs, more smart phones, ... give you any additional time in your life! I guess they will consume a lot of your free time to find and fix bugs of many kinds ... 

Are You Looking for Authenticated Encrypted Time Signals?

GPS-based time signals could be less robust and reliable - this has been discussed in various forums. Electric power systems rely on time synchronization you can trust.

In a new US DOE project (TASQC - Timing Authentication Secured by Quantum Correlations) experts are planning to develop authenticated encrypted time signals that mitigate known vulnerabilities in GPS-based time. The project aims to:

• Develop and demonstrate a secure time distribution system using quantum-correlated signals over geographically wide area;
• Develop and demonstrate protocols for time-stamp authentication for data reported from power systems;
• Expand capability of the developed infrastructure for secure authentication of broadcast messages;
• Evaluate the system for cyber- and physical-vulnerabilities;
• Partner with industry to develop timing requirements for power systems and to refine design of system and protocols.

Phil Evans, Ph.D., TASQC Principle Investigator, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, respectfully requests your assistance for the TASQC project by both answering the questions in a brief survey, and distributing it amongst your colleagues in the electric power industry.

Discrepancy in GPS Timing of 13 Microseconds

Power Delivery systems rely to some degree on Time Synchronization based on global positioning system (GPS).

A time spike in the global positioning system which rippled through the world on January 28, 2016 was caused by a satellite launched in 1990 failing and triggering a software bug!

Although the timing anomaly measured just microseconds, it could have caused significant navigation errors, Richard Easther, head of the University of Auckland's physics department said.
"The rule of thumb is that for every nanosecond of error, you could be out by as much as a foot," Easther said.

"An error of 13 microseconds or 13,000 nanoseconds works out as just under four kilometres."

What would that error mean for Sampled Values? The 13 microseconds are equivalent  to a difference in the angle of 0.234 degrees in a 50 Hz AC system. This seems not to be very critical. But who knows what happens next.

Be aware that our future power system will rely more and more on GPS or other central time sources. So, the power infrastructure does rely on the GPS (or other means) - which by nature does on the power infrastructure. Everything seems to be highly interconnected.

Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) to retain “leap second”

For some time experts discuss the need of “leap seconds” that require very smart time management services to follow the number of leap seconds added from time to time. Leap seconds are added periodically to adjust to irregularities in the earth’s rotation in relation to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the current reference for measuring time, in order to remain close to mean solar time (UT1). A leap second was added most recently on 30 June 2015 at 23:59:60 UTC.

Do you know how many leap seconds have been added since UTC became a standard? Hm, your IEC 61850, IEC 60870-5-104, DNP3 devices and SCADA systems need to know it. Otherwise the time synchronization is more or less useless. 26 leap seconds have been added … and nobody knows when the next will be added.

Several experts have requested to get rid of the leap seconds … ITU decided to study the issue in more detail and come back to discuss the issue in 2013.

Click HERE for a report from ITU.

Click HERE for background information.

Guideline for Time Stamping of Operational Data Logs

NERC has published a Guideline to describe minimum recommendations for maintaining accurate time stamp indications for logged events on the bulk power system.

Security Guideline for the Electricity Sector:
Time Stamping of Operational Data Logs

Click HERE to download the complete NERC document.

This is a document worth to read!

GPS Time Synchronization - A Single Point of Failure?

The GPS time synchronization is one of the crucial underlying solutions for time synchronization in power system information sharing: in substations, between substation, and wide area applications (with or without applying IEC 61850).

A paper published by SEL discusses the issue of GPS time synchronization - and especially when it may become a single point of failure in a power system.

Click HERE for a paper that discusses the issue.

IEC 61850 UTC time stamp next leap second this month

Dear All,

The IEC 61850 time stamp uses the UTC time. The next leap second will be added on December 31, 2008:

2008 December 31, 23h 59m 59s
2008 December 31, 23h 59m 60s
2009 January 1, 0h 0m 0s

That means Dec 31, 2008 is one second longer than any other day in 2008!

As a consequence my birthday is (one second) longer than yours!! Yes, my birthday is Dec. 31 ...

I hope your SCADA and EMS systems take care of my birthday and adjust their glocks by inserting one "Karlheinz" second on Dec 31, 2008.

TAI, Temps Atomique International, is the international atomic time scale based on a continuous counting of the SI second. TAI is currently ahead of UTC by 33 seconds ... soon 34 seconds.