HMS offers also Gateways from Profibus and EtherNet/IP to IEC 61850 an IEC 60870-5-104

The Anybus SG-gateway family is designed for use with Smart Grid applications such as, control of electrical equipment, metering applications and with the bridging of Industrial Networks with the Power Grid.

The Anybus SG-gateways were originally developed under the HMS's Labs Initiative, known as "Labline". Now that the gateways have been finalized they are currently under the transition of moving under the "Anybus" brand name. The product remains unchanged - just labels and product color and web interface are in the process of update. Until Jan 2016 they are available as the "Labline" brand.

The SG-gateways support IEC61850 client/server, IEC60870-5-104 client/server and Modbus TCP client/server & RTU master/slave protocol stacks. Additional industrial automation standards like Profinet, Profibus, EtherNet/IP or metering protocols like M-Bus are also available in some models. 

Click HERE for more details.

ENTSO-E publishes November 2015 news on IEC 61850

ENTSO-E seems to be quite happy with:

1. the level of interoperability many different vendors’ subsystems to be applied within the TSO system management architecture.
2. the status of the standardization within IEC TC 57 WG 10, WG 17 and WG 18.

ENTSO-E just published a brief report on the

IOP 2015, organized by UCA International User Group (Iug) in Brussels, Hotel Crowne Plaza, 26.9-2.10

IEC TC57 WG10(-17-18) meetings, hosted by and at ENTSO-E premises, Brussels , 5.-9.10.

Click HERE to read the summary on the two events.

Question & Answer: What is the IEC 61850 EntryTime?

EntryTime is, e.g., used for IEC 61850 Log Entries to identify when a log entry has been stored.

Here is a Log Entry (encoded as an XML document):

<JournalEntry Entry="26" Day="11647" ms="19228670" Order="0">
  <Variable Tag="ServerIEDExample/CSWI0$ST$Pos$stVal">
    <BitString>00</BitString>
  </Variable>
  <Variable Tag="ServerIEDExample/CSWI0$ST$Pos$stVal|ReasonCode">
    <BitString>08</BitString>
  </Variable>
  <Variable Tag="ServerIEDExample/CSWI0$ST$Pos$q">
    <BitString>0000</BitString>
  </Variable>

The IEC 61850 EntryTime is mapped to MMS TimeOfDay:

The MMS TimeOfDay epoch began at 0 hours on 1 January 1984 (MJD 40 587). Times measured are designated in this standard as MMS TimeOfDay milli-seconds GMT and TimeOfDay days GMT, and represent offsets from the epoch.

How to translate the above time to date and time?

Day translates:
http://www.convertunits.com/dates/from/Jan+1,+1984/to/Nov+21,+2015

Date difference from Jan 1, 1984 to Nov 21, 2015
The total number of days between Sunday, January 1st, 1984 and Saturday, November 21st, 2015 is 11,647 days.

Milli-second translates:
https://www.unitjuggler.com/convert-time-from-ms-to-day.html?val=19228670

~=  5 hr. 20 min. 28 sec. 670 ms

Saturday, 21st November 2015 05:20:28:670

It is that easy.

By the way, the above log is generated by the SystemCorp Stack/API by simply adding three (3) lines in an CID File (in this case for the Smart Grid Gateway of HMS supporting Modbus, M-Bus, Profibus, Profinet, EtherNet/IP…):

<LogControl datSet="GooseDS" intgPd="0" logEna="true" logName="ServerIED" name="TestLog">
    <TrgOps dchg="true"/>
</LogControl>

Stay tuned for more features.

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.

Question & Answer: Are “valKind” and “valImport” related?

The configuration of systems and IEDs with IEC 61850 tools (system tools, IED tools, protocol stacks) is a challenge for people involved in power system protection, monitoring, and automation.

I guess that you have some experience with the many rules and the underlying philosophy that are crucial for the correct operation of interconnected IEDs.

Quite often it is obvious how to apply a given rule in the configuration language (IEC 61850-6 SCL). First of all: You have to take into account the standard document AND the green tissues!

Example on the relation between “valKind” and “valImport”. Tissue 804 introduces the new attribute “valImport” in an SCL document:

http://tissue.iec61850.com/tissue/804

The need for that “valImport” attribute is discussed at the bottom of the tissue 804. The solution is well defined.

The two attributes can be applied for data attributes configured in an SCL file. There are two different categories of data attributes:

1. Models of “process” related information, e.g., scale factor of an Integer modeled measurement.

2. Models of “communication service” related information, e.g., Trigger options or integrity period of a report control block.

If in a SCL document (SCD) the process related values (e.g., scale) SHALL be fixed, these values must be set and declared as fixed. It is not allowed by an IED tool nor online to change these (fixed) values: Here are the corresponding attribute settings (valKind=RO AND valImport=false).

We have to be careful with rules (not defined in the standards) like the following:

If valKind=Set THEN valImport=true (if I can overwrite a value with a service, it makes sense to allow to configure a value at tool level; it may be useful for communication service related information of a control block, but not for process related information).

Be careful with the combinations of these two attributes … they are independent of each other. And: Not all tools may understand the philosophy below.

Viertes IEC-61850-Seminar in Deutsch – Karlsruhe (02.12.-04.12.2015)

Sie haben jetzt wieder die Möglichkeit, ein dreitägiges (deutschsprachiges!) Intensivseminar mit Theorie und viel Praxis in Karlsruhe zu einem

***unschlagbar günstigen Preis*** von NUR 790,- Euro (netto) zu buchen!

02.-04. Dezember 2015 (Karlsruhe)
11.-13. Januar 2016 (Karlsruhe)
07.-09. März 2016 (Karlsruhe)

Die NettedAutomation GmbH hat seit 2003 weltweit über 200 Seminare (mit nahezu 4.000 Teilnehmern) für IEC 61850 und IEC 60870-5-104 durchgeführt.

Das Interesse an Seminaren und Trainingskursen im deutschsprachigen Raum ist so groß, dass NettedAutomation im Dezember 2015 den vierten Trainingskurs in Deutsch anbietet.

Am ersten Tag wird ein Überblick über das Normungsumfeld und die einzelnen Normen gegeben. Im Mittelpunkt stehen dabei die grundlegenden Eigenschaften und Bedeutung der Normenreihe IEC 61850 für Engineering, Datenmodellierung, Datenmodelle, Kommunikationsmöglichkeiten, Sicherheitslösungen sowie deren internationale Umsetzung und Akzeptanz.

Am zweiten und dritten Tag werden Details behandelt und mit praktischen Übungen an realen Geräten begleitet. Ein Teil der eingesetzten Lösungen und Werkzeuge können auch nach dem Training weiter verwendet werden. Es wird vor allem die Frage behandelt: Was bedeutet der Einsatz dieser Normen für Hersteller von Geräten und Systemen, für die Systemintegratoren und für die Anwender?

Anmeldeunterlagen:
http://www.nettedautomation.com/download/Sem/ka15/Public-Seminars_Netted_R0-4_2015-08-17_DE.pdf

Proxy and Gateway Approach of IEC 61850

A Proxy Server in the sense of IEC 61850 exposes the very same information models of many IEDs through a Server that uses the same Logical Device/Logical Node names (references) as in the IEDs that are “mirrored” or “proxied”.

There is no difference in the meaning and syntax between the models in the various IED Servers and the Proxy Server.

The general gateway approach is quite different. I a gateway we are free to manage information like:

1. Translate data from legacy protocols such as IEC 60870-5-103, IEC 60870-5-104, IEEE 1815 (DNP3), IEC 61158-6 (Modbus), etc. into IEC 61850 data model
2. Add data local to the IED hosting the Proxy/Gateway
3. Rename logical devices coming from IED level into logical device server
4. Rearrange/Rename logical nodes coming from IED level into logical device of the Proxy/Gateway server
5. Merge of two or more information objects coming from two or more different logical nodes at IED level into one logical node of the Proxy/Gateway server
6. Split of information objects coming from one logical node at IED level into two or more logical nodes of the Proxy/Gateway server where each logical node contains a subset of the information objects of the original logical node
7. Transform a generic information object (e.g. GGIO, GAPC, etc.) at IED level into a semantically defined information object of the Proxy/Gateway server
8. Convert a specific information object (e.g. MMTN) at IED level into another semantically defined information object (e.g. MMXU) of the Proxy/Gateway server
9. Adapt the scale, information encoding and dead band configuration between the IED data object and the data object in the Proxy/Gateway server
10. Logical (e.g. and, or, if/else, grouping of indications, etc.) and arithmetic (e.g. multiplication, division, addition, subtraction, etc.) transformations between one or more data objects at IED level and one or more data objects of the Proxy/Gateway server

Real IEDs may have gateway and proxy functions.

Click HERE for very simple and easy to use proxies and/or gateways for IEC 61850, IEC 60870-5-104, Modbus, Profibus, Profinet, … offered by HMS. These can be understood as Micro-RTU …

Substation to Control Center Communication: IEC 61850-90-2 TR Approved

The draft Technical Report for Substation to Control Center Communication has been approved by 100 %:

IEC 61850-90-2 TR:
Communication networks and systems for power utility automation - Part 90-2: Using IEC 61850 for the communication between substations and control centres

The final Technical Report will be published in December 2015. It provides a comprehensive overview of the different aspects that need to be considered while using IEC 61850 for information exchange between substations and control or maintenance centres or other system level applications. In particular, this technical report:

• defines use cases and communication requirements that require an information exchange between substations and control or maintenance centres
• describes the usage of the configuration language of IEC 61850‑6
• gives guidelines for the selection of communication services and architectures compatible with IEC 61850
• describes the engineering workflow
• introduces the use of a Proxy/Gateway concept
• describes the links regarding the Specific Communication Service Mapping (SCSM)

The wait for the application of IEC 61850 for information exchange between substations and control centers is over – starting in 2016, there is no excuse any more.

The scope of the TR is quite limited: Substation (only!) to control centers. The future energy delivery system (in which power is one aspect only) will build a hierarchy of aggregated information systems. There will be several layers of information management systems. This is required because of the use of IEC 61850 from power distribution all the way up to the transmission system operator. Information needs to be aggregated because of the sheer unlimited amount of information generated and consumed in the system.

It is likely that the TR 90-2 will be used for other vertical information flows between aggregation points and higher level systems. A subset of the TR 90-2 may be used for information exchange between a control center and a wind power plant.

The restricted scope in the TR 61850-90-2 is just toner on paper – like in almost all IEC 61850 parts. A server in the sense of IEC 61850 can expose any data from any application. IEC 61850 relies on ISO 9506 (MMS – Manufacturing Message Specification). As the name says: MMS (and IEC 61850) can be used for manufacturing and many other domains.

The main scope of IEC 61850 is constrained by the title: “… for power utility automation”. From a technical point of view we could leave only “… automation”:

“Communication networks and systems for automation” – BUT this would never be accepted by the IEC officials. Automation as such is not the scope of IEC TC 57.

MMS is not restricted to “Manufacturing” and IEC 61850 is not restricted to “power utility automation”.

German Standardization Roadmap Industrie 4.0 (Version 2)

Several groups within Germany have written a 70+ page Standardization Roadmap Industrie 4.0 (Version 2, Oct 2015). The document lists a lot of topics relevant for standardization related to the future industrial automation. It contains a lot of issues that “should” or “must” be considered in the standardization of the future.

I was a bit surprised that the industrial automation world seems to lack of many basic standards that would support interoperability and inter-workability. Guess the authors have understood that the myriad of fieldbusses seems not to solve the needs for the future automation process – fieldbusses lead to many islands that can not talk together.

The power world has decided already some 20 years ago to build the foundation of interoperable systems based on a well defined huge “dictionary” of semantic terms (the hundreds of logical nodes for almost all power domains).

With IEC 61850 we change from “bits” to “well defined terms and messages”:

All the messages exchanged could be based on a well standardized semantic, like the temperature supervision model “STMP”: Trip =  “STMP1.Trip.stVal” or the current temperature = “STMP1.Tmp.mag.i”.

The various layers are shown in the following figure:

These values can be reported by a DataSet and a GOOSE message (in real-time … in some 3 to 5 msec):

The smart grid efforts within IEC are tremendously supported by IEC TC 57 … especially with the standards series IEC 61850. This series is part of the “IEC smart grid standards roadmap”.

This roadmap has really attracted the Industrie 4.0 supporters! They write in their roadmap:

“Empfehlung, eine Normenlandkarte (standardisation map) für Industrie 4.0/Smart manufacturing elektronisch zu beschreiben. Die Normenlandkarte wird ein im Vergleich zum Smart Grid Mapping Tool (http://smartgridstandardsmap.com) äquivalentes elektronisches Werkzeug darstellen.”

They recommend to “copy” the “IEC smart grid standards roadmap” and name it “IEC Industry 4.0 / Smart Manufacturing Roadmap).

Click HERE to see the IEC smart grid standards roadmap.

Click HERE to access the Standardization Roadmap Industrie 4.0 (Version 2, Oct 2015, German only).

I hope that they will “copy” more than just a roadmap … refer to IEC 61850 some time down the road.

By the way: HMS is bridging the semantic-less fieldbusses to the semantic defined in IEC 61850 …

http://www.hms-networks.com/about/labs/smart-grid/labline-sg

The Energy Lab 2.0 in Karlsruhe (Germany)

Karlsruhe (Germany, the hometown of Karlheinz Schwarz) is known (among others) for supporting the German Energiewende: The KIT and NettedAutomation GmbH

NettedAutomation is deeply involved in the dissemination of IEC 61850 all over the world. Now I see big investments in Energy related R&D projects in Germany. One of the most crucial activities is the new “Energy Lab 2.0” in Karlsruhe.

Energy Lab 2.0 – The Smart Energiewende Platform
New Research Facility Links Producers with Storage Systems and Consumers –
Investment Totaling EUR 22 Million

“ … The project is embedded in the overall energy strategy of the Helmholtz Association. For the Energy Lab 2.0, the partners plan to build a simulation and control center and a network of energy technology facilities on KIT Campus North, an electrolysis test center at Forschungszentrum Jülich, and a facility for testing power-to-heat concepts at the German Aerospace Center, Stuttgart, by 2018.
The energy platform will link characteristic components for power, heat, and synthesis gas production with various energy storage technologies and consumers. For this purpose, large facilities existing at KIT will be integrated into the Energy Lab 2.0: The solar power storage park, the bioliq pilot facility, and selected energy consumers on KIT Campus North. Electrical, electrochemical, and chemical storage systems as well as a load- and fuel-flexible gas turbine with
current generator will be newly constructed and are planned to complement the network. A simulation and control center at KIT will integrate all network components of KIT and the partners in a smart energy system using information and communication technologies.
This infrastructure facility is the first of its type in Europe. …”

More to come. Stay tuned.

Click HERE for a more comprehensive description [pdf].

IEC 61850 Testlabs Accredited by the UCAIUG

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.

IEC 62351-12: Resilience and security recommendations for power systems with DER systems

IEC TC 57 has published an important 100+ pages document that cares about the resilience and recovery of power system build on a high penetration of DER systems.

IEC 62351-12 TR (57/1637/DTR):
Power systems management and associated information exchange –
Data and communications security –
Part 12: Resilience and security recommendations for power systems with Distributed Energy Resources (DER) cyber-physical systems

Voting closes 2015-12-25

“ … This document discusses cyber security recommendations and engineering/operational strategies for improving the resilience of power systems with interconnected Distributed Energy Resources (DER) systems. It covers the resilience requirements for the many different stakeholders of these dispersed cyber-physical generation and storage devices, with the goal of enhancing the safety, reliability, power quality, and other operational aspects of power systems, particularly those with high penetrations of DER systems.

In the energy sector, two key phrases are becoming the focus of international and national policies: “grid resilience” and “cyber security of the cyber-physical grid”. Grid resilience responds to the overarching concern: "The critical infrastructure, the Smart Electric Grid, must be resilient - to be protected against both physical and cyber problems when possible, but also to cope with and recover from the inevitable disruptive event, no matter what the cause of that problem is - cyber, physical, malicious, or inadvertent."
“Grid resilience … includes hardening, advanced capabilities, and recovery/reconstitution. Although most attention is placed on best practices for hardening, resilience strategies must also consideroptions to improve grid flexibility and control.” Resilience of the grid is often associated with making the grid able to withstand and recover from severe weather and other physical events, but resilience should also include the ability of the cyber-physical grid to withstand and recover from malicious and inadvertent cyber events. ...”

Two of the most crucial challenges of the future of our power systems (electric, gas, and heat) are the understanding of (1) the power system AND (2) the automation and communication infrastructure. This requires solid and comprehensive education of the engineers – junior and senior. Unfortunately a lot of engineers show a lag in understanding new and existing technologies.

The good news is that – at least in the electric world – we have globally a single standard (IEC 61850) that meets almost all needs and that is accepted and used all over!

Saudi Arabia to Build 50 MW PV Plant

Several companies announced to establish a solar photovoltaic (PV) power plant with a capacity of 50 MW in the city of Saudi Aflaj, which will be the first utility-scale PV plant in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Quite interesting that Saudi Arabia is expecting a growth of energy demand rising by 8 percent annually and is expected to be 120 GW by 2030.

Click HERE for a news report.

During my visit of Dammam (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) this week (training on IEC 61850) I was (by chance) contacted by a senior engineer (involved in gas related automation) who walked by outside our meeting room, stopped, and asked what we were doing. We talked about this and that.

Then he asked me how we can store PV power … this led us to the situation in Germany where we have several MW scale projects that convert PV or Wind Power into gas. He was very impressed that this is happening in big scale.

Sure, we have a lot of renewable power in Germany.

What to do with all the power? Convert to gas! Yes!

Click HERE to a report on the largest system today in Hamburg (1.5 MW).

Click HERE for some explanations of the basics of power-to-gas.

The gas and heat/cooling domains will find that the IEC 61850 can be used for many applications in these areas – to benefit from the standards used in electric power systems.

Click HERE for some discussion of using IEC 61850 (UCA 2.0) for the gas industry.

More to come. Keep tuned to the IEC 61850 blog.

Comprehensive Alarm Model for IEC 61850 to be developed

IEC 61850 defines many Data Objects that could be used as alarm status points. These points can be easily reported (reporting) and stored in a local store (logging). The alarm information can be sent spontaneously to a SCADA system or any other IEC 61850 client. The need of an alarm management system (alarm needs to be confirmed by one or two or all clients, retrieve a list of all active alarms …) was excluded in the first years of the IEC TC 57 WG 10 work (late 90’s). We have decided to come up with some proposals later … the “later” is here (2015).

A new Task Force is proposed to look at the needs and to harmonize the requirements of IEC TC 88 (wind power) with the requirements of alarm handling from other domains to produce a generic solution within the suite of IEC 61850 specifications.

IEC TC 57 invites experts to join the new Task Force (57/1631/DC):

IEC TR 61850-90-18: Communication networks and systems for power utility automation – Part 90-18: Alarm handling in IEC 61850 based systems

If you are interested in supporting that work contact your national TC 57 committee.

The German Energiewende Needs Communication – Government Pushes for Metering Infrastructure

The German government has published a draft that comprises several proposals for new (to be modified existing) laws:

Digitalisierung Energiewende: BMWi eröffnet Konsultation zu intelligenten Messsystemen

Click HERE for the current draft and related information.

The draft talks a lot about remote monitoring and control. E.g., “Zur Gewährleistung der Fernsteuerbarkeit von Anlagen im Sinne des Absatz 1 Nummer 1 Buchstabe b) ist es insbesondere erforderlich, dass neben der Abrufung der Ist-Einspeisung gemäß Absatz 1 Nummer 1 Buchstabe c) auch eine ferngesteuerte Reduzierung der Einspeiseleistung der Anlage über das intelligente Messsystem erfolgen kann …”

IEC 60870-5-104 for Smart Grids by Efen

Data Exchange According to IEC Standards Data communication is the key to long-term grid stability. To this end, EFEN applies IEC standards to ensure the functionality of its products across borders. The Smart Grid Interface complies with IEC 60870-5-104 to ensure that it is not only state-of-the-art today but also in the future.

Click HERE for the brochure by Efen [English]:

Smart Grid Interface: Intelligent energy distribution
for smart energy supply

Click HERE für die Broschüre von Efen [Deutsch]:

Smart Grid Interface: Intelligenz im Energieverteilnetz
für die smarte Energieversorgung

More to come on the IEC TC 57 standards IEC 60870-5-104 and IEC 61850.

If you need to get your information coming from or going to Modbus, Profibus, Profinet, … being communicated through IEC 60870-5-105 and/or IEC 61850 and vice versa – check HERE.

IEC 61400-25-41 Project Finally Approved

Document 88/567/RVN
Wind turbines - Part 25-41: Communications for monitoring and control of wind power plants - Mapping to communication profile based on IEC 62541 (OPC UA)

This New Work Proposal was finally accepted due to a late appointment of two additional exerts from two additional countries.
Project title: IEC 61400-25-41 TS Ed.1 (Technical Specification)

The focus is intended to be strictly on IEC 61400-25. It will replace the obsolete OPC-XML-DA mapping. No impact on the work on IEC 61850 web technology (Project IEC 61850-8-2) is intended by this NP.

Click HERE for an overview on the IEC 61400-25 series.

IEC 61850 Interoperability Test in Brussels Was a Big Success

The IEC 61850 Interoperability Test in Brussels (Belgium, at ENTSO-E) last week was a big success. The plenary meeting of the IEC TC 57 WG 10, 17 and 18 was informed about the results on Monday, October 05, 2015.

Compared to the previous IOPs in 2011 and 2013 there were more companies attending in 2015: 19/43/49. Total number of vendors that provided products to test was: 14/20/29. The number of people participating grew from 37/93 to 130 !!

Tests covered: SCL, Client/Server, GOOSE, SV, HSR/PRP, and IEEE 1588

For Client/Server 15 issues were found in 2013, in 2015 just 4. No issue was found on GOOSE.

A total of 32 issues need some attention. The issues will be posted to the tissue database if required.

The first tissues have already been posted:

http://tissue.iec61850.com/tissue.mspx?issueid=1445

http://tissue.iec61850.com/tissue.mspx?issueid=1446

http://tissue.iec61850.com/tissue.mspx?issueid=1447

http://tissue.iec61850.com/tissue.mspx?issueid=1448

The IOP at ENTSO-E has shown that IEC 61850 standard parts and products are very stable … there is no need to wait for applying IEC 61850.