by Christoph Brunner, it4power, Switzerland
As I am writing this column, we just finished our working group meeting which we had in Fribourg, Switzerland. As it has become a tradition, in this first column of the year, I will give you an update on the latest activities in working group 10.
With the transition from 2024 to 2025, we did achieve some significant milestones for IEC 61850 and working group 10. By the end of 2024, we could close activities that were in the focus of WG10 during the last years. Those activities were mainly focused on the processes defined in relation to IEC 61850 system configuration language (SCL). As such, we could finish the technical report IEC 61850-90-30, which introduced formal ways to do specification using IEC 61850 SCL. Related to that, we also published the second edition of IEC 61850-7-6, Basic Application Profiles. Compared to the first edition, this second edition introduced ways to describe a basic application profile using SCL.
Those two documents introduced a namespace extension to the 61850 SCL identified as IEC 61850-6-100. Some features of this extension include the capability to describe signal flow in specifications or to specify required functional behavior using function block diagrams or structured text as defined in IEC 61131.
During 2024, we also could establish a new organization for WG10 which was proposed to share the load of work for the management of the working group. The convenor of the working group can now rely on three technical area coordinators, which oversee the various documents related to the technical area. The three areas are aligned with the main topics of IEC 61850: Communication – Data Modeling – Engineering. The technical area coordinators are coordinating with the project leaders responsible for the various parts of the standard that belong to their area.
In 2025, we plan to introduce the new role of a co-convenor. IEC processes support that working groups have two co-convenors which allows sharing the workload of the convenor. As I am writing this column, a questionnaire is circulated to the national committees asking if they approve the introduction of the role of a co-convenor for WG10.
In 2024, we also reactivated the regular publication of a roadmap for IEC 61850 – there was one published as 57/2744/INF on December 6, 2024. That roadmap includes:
(1) An overview of all parts of IEC 61850 with the latest published version and if applicable the associated code component and the next stage of publication of an ongoing revision
(2) The planning for parts of the standard that are currently in revision
(3) An overview of documents currently in development. In addition to that, it may also contain updates on ongoing activities like in the one published in December last year, we introduced the concept of Edition 2025
If you are actively participating in the standardization through your national committees, you may have noticed that recently we changed from technical reports (TR) to public available specifications (PAS) for all activities where we create data models as transitional namespaces (typically out of the IEC 61850-90-xx group). The reason is that IEC enforced the rule that technical reports cannot have requirements or recommendations. A PAS is a specification, that is published for industry trial for topics that are not yet mature for being published as international standard – so if fits quite well the concept of our transitional namespaces.
Other changes in processes are, that we use now questionnaires rather than documents for comments to announce new intended work and that we issue a corrigendum, whenever we have an update of a code component due to a TISSUE that has been approved.
This later should ensure that those that have bought a standard get the latest full version of the code component.
Now – what are we working on recently? As explained in my last column, we are preparing a new edition of part 7-4 and part 6, without technical changes, but preparing for the future.
We are working on an update of the modeling guidelines (7-5 and 7-500). As new, we will include among other modeling withdrawable circuit breakers and modeling topology. There will also be a proposal for a new logical node with fault-related measurements. Guidelines to model transformer regulation and transformer cooling systems will possibly be published as its own part.
The guidelines for functional testing (61850-10-3) will be revised. There is a list of topics to be included in the new version, that ranges from modeling test equipment as part of the system, aspects of testing and cyber security with key management, to requirements for remote testing or the impact of virtualization and centralization.
We also started new work that will discuss the impact of virtualization and centralization on an IEC 61850 system.
As we are finishing the technical specification IEC 61850-6-3 describing how to create machine processable rules based on OCL to validate IEC 61850 XML based files (like SCL), we will start writing those rules.
The rules will belong to a specific standard part and will be available as code components.
So, while there are some changes on organization and processes, that should help us to be more efficient, there is still much going on to keep us busy!
Biography:
Christoph Brunner is the President of his own independent consulting company it4power LLC based in Switzerland. He has over 40 years of experience with knowledge across several areas within the Utility Industry and of technologies from the Automation Industry. He has worked as a project manager at ABB Switzerland Ltd in the area of Power Technology Products in Zurich / Switzerland where he was responsible for the process close communication architecture of the automation system. He is Convener of WG 10 of the IEC TC57 and is a member of WG 17, 18 and 19 of IEC TC 57. He is member of IEEE-PES and IEEE-SA. He is an IEEE Fellow and is active in several working groups of the IEEE-PSRC and a member of the PSRC main committee and the subcommittee H. He is advisor to the board of the UCA international users’ group.
