During the WG10 meeting in May in Berlin representatives from ENTSO-E  were invited to express their concerns and  were asked to provide examples to support them. As a result, the ENTSO-E created a "Punch-List" with about 25 individual issues, which were presented at the WG 10 meeting in October in Houston. 

The "Punch-List" confirmed what was expected based on the several thousands of IEC 61850 substations in operation and the hundreds of satisfied IEC 61850 customers around the world: IEC 61850 is already far beyond legacy protocols like DNP3 or IEC 60870-5. There is no single concern about communication interoperability. Most of the concerns are related to the engineering capabilities of IEC 61850 and to the complexity of the standard.

Similar to the move from electromechanical to microprocessor based relays some 30 years ago, the introduction of IEC 61850 is another significant step. This has probably been underestimated by the WG while editing the standard. The utility engineer trying to apply the standard needs guidance, otherwise he will not be able to classify problems that naturally may appear.

The "Punch-List" however, has identified some issues that - once solved - will enhance the benefits of IEC 61850:

• Semantic interpretation of real models and
• The multi-vendor engineering process

While some of the issues have been addressed, it is still a valuable input that has been provided by a group of utilities thanks to their willingness to fully exploit the benefits of IEC 61850. Similar issues have been identified by other utilities while doing their own integration of standard based products.

This is also a good example that standards need to be jointly developed between vendors and users to ensure that the standards fulfill the requirements of the users. The contribution of the users is crucial - they need to have a clear understanding of what they want, and how they want to use the standard based products so that they can formulate their requirements. The technology today offers too many possibilities that would not be fully exploited if we would just do business as usual.

As I am describing in cover story of this issue of PAC world, significant work is ongoing to add functionality that will solve many of the raised concerns. The remaining ones are mainly a question of product functionality. A list of IEC 61850 documents under development is included bellow. 

Author: Christoph Brunner, it4power, Switzerland