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The IEC 61850 standard — Communication networks and automation systems

from an electrical engineering point of view

Conference Paper · May 2016

DOI: 10.1109/SIELA.2016.7543038

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The IEC 61850 Standard – Communication Networks
and Automation Systems from an Electrical
Engineering Point of View

Yulian Rangelov, Nikolay Nikolaev and Milena Ivanova

Department “Electric Power Engineering”
Technical University of Varna
Varna, Bulgaria
y.rangelov@tu-varna.bg, n.nikolaev@tu-varna.bg, m.dicheva@tu-varna.bg

Abstract — The standard IEC61850 is presented, considering

its implementation and application as a platform, from the point II. OVERVIEW ON THE DIFFERENT IEC 61850 PARTS
of view of electrical engineers rather than software and electronic As mentioned above, the standard consists of many parts.
engineers. This is important since electrical engineers are the The relation between them is clarified in fig. 1. Parts 1 and 2
staff responsible for the design, construction, operation and give basic introduction to the ideas, principles, concepts and
maintenance of the electrical substations.
the glossary to the standard. Parts 8 and 9 focus on the
Keywords— substation; communications; automation; scada mapping between the abstract data classes and services to the
communication protocols and give specifications of the serial
unidirectional communication and samples values transmission
I. INTRODUCTION [13-15]. Part 10 is dedicated to the conformance testing of the
On a global scale, the energy sector is geographically client-server communication and the engineering tools [16].
divided by two main standardization models - IEC The other parts are more relevant to electrical engineers and
(International Electrotechnical Commission) and ANSI will be explained in the following subsections.
(American National Standards Institute) [1]. Very often, this is
an obstacle for the development of technologies in the field of
power system automation.
In 2004, the IEC61850 was issued as a global standard for
the control and protection systems of switchgears for medium
and high voltage. It covers both the IEC and ANSI
standardization models [2]. The new standard ensures:
• Unified standard for all substations and power plants;
• Application of common format for description of
substations and making the design approach easier;
• Defining the main services required for data
transmission using different communication protocols;
• Interoperability between devices from different
manufacturers.
IEC61850 provides standardized work-frame for
integration of the specific communication requirements for
substations, functional characteristics, structure of the data
packages in the devices, unifying the names of data packages,
how applications interact with and control the devices, and
conduct standardized tests. Fig. 1. General structure of IEC 61850

The standard IECE61850 is structured in 10 parts on about A. Part 3: General Requirements

1200 pages [1]. The Bulgarian Institute for Standardization This part focuses on the construction, design and
have harmonized only few parts of it. environment conditions of the intelligent electronic devices
(IEDs) [3].
B. Part 4: System and Project Management
This part of the standard defines a system for project
management of utility automation systems (UAS), including
substation automation systems (SAS) [4]. The UAS usually
operates in an environment which typically includes the
following (see fig. 2):
• Telecommunication environment: network control
centers, subordinate systems, teleprotection;
• Human as local operator;
• Process environment: switchgear, power transformers
and auxiliary equipment.
requirements. The responsibility is distributed among several
engineers:
• Engineer responsible for the project requirements;
• Engineer responsible for the system architecture, based
on the project requirements;
• Equipment vendors;
• System integrators – engineers who ensure the
interoperability of the different UAS components and
the process environment;
• IEDs parametrization engineer;
• Commissioning engineer.

C. Part 5: Communication Requirements for Functions and

Device Models
The fifth part is focused mainly on the SAS [5]. It
standardizes the communication between IEDs and the
requirements which should be met.
Being part of the SAS, the IEDs should be able to perform
at least one or more functions, which are categorized as either
protection, control, measurement etc. The different functions
are standardized. The functions could be split into independent
pieces which perform specific actions and could be used in
more than one function. These pieces are called Logical Nodes
(LN). The LNs contain the pieces of information which need to
be communicated (PICOM) between the different functions
and IDEs.
The relation between LNs, physical devices (PD) and
functions (F) is depicted in fig. 3. The LN are connected by
logical connections (LC) and the physical devices by physical
connections (PC). The figure shows that one function can
encompass LNs from different PDs and that one PD can have

Fig. 2. Environment of the utility automation system

In terms of UAS, the “process” is used to denote the
process of generation, transmission and distribution of
electrical energy.
IEDs are the main components of the UAS and could be:
• For the telecommunication environment: gateways,
converters, telecommunication part of RTUs,
teleprotection;
• For human-machine interface (HMI): gateways;
personal computers; workstations, other IEDs with
embedded HMI;
• For the process environment: bay control units, relay
protection, the process part of RTUs, measurement
devices, autonomous controllers, sensors, numerical
interfaces of switchgears, power and instrument
transformers.
The engineering process defines the conditions for the
design and the configuration of a particular power plant or
substation, based on the operation logic and the customer’s Fig. 3. Logical nodes, functions and physical devices
Fig. 4. Topology of substation automation system
many LNs.
The functions are divided in three levels: station, bay/unit
or process (see fig. 4). The process functions interface to the
process itself, i.e. sampled values gathering, switchgear
position monitoring and control, and others. The bay/unit level
consists of the protection and control functions acting mainly
on the primary equipment of their own bay. There are two
types of station level functions: (i) functions related to the
process, which use information from more than one bay and
being able to act upon all of them; (ii) functions providing
interface to the station operator or a remote control center.
The numbers in a circle from fig. 4 denote the different
interfaces between the levels: (1, 2) protection data; (4)
analogue data; (5, 6) control data; (7) data exchange between
substation level and remote engineer’s workplace; (3, 7, 8, 9)
data exchange; (10, 11) control data exchange. Interfaces 2 and
11 are not within the scope of IEC 61850.
D. Part 6: Configuration Description Language for
Communication in Electrical Substations Related to IEDs
This part of the standard defines an object-oriented, XML
based language for automation system configuration, named
System Configuration description Language (SCL) [6]. A
configuration file typically starts with the description of the
primary electrical circuit equipment and their interconnections.
After that, the LN, the functions and the communication
between them are defined. The SCL code also contains the
configuration of each specific IED and from that perspective
every IEC 61850 compatible device should be capable to be
configured with an SCL code. The following file types are
defined: ICD – IED capability description; IID – instantiated
IED description; SSD – system specification description; SCD
– system configuration description; CID – configured IED
description; SED – system exchange description. Clause 10 of
this part explains the functionality of the software tools needed
for system specification and configuration.
E. Part 7: Basic communication structure
The main architecture which IEC 61850 adopts is the
division of the data definition and the processes by creating
data objects and processes which are independent from any
protocols [7-12]. Therefore, the particular definitions allow the
organization of the data objects and the processes in terms of
any protocol which is capable to meet their requirements.
Part 7-1 defines the modelling methods, the communication
principles and the information models which are used in the
next subparts.
Part 7-2 standardizes an abstract communication service
interface between client and remote server or between
publishing device and subscribed devices (for sampled values
transmission).
Part 7-3 defines common data classes used to describe
equipment models and functions for substations.
Part 7-4 refines the models by introducing compatible LNs
for the substation equipment and data classes. It contains
detailed information for the used alphabetical designation of
LNs (relay protection equipment, registering devices,
regulators, tap changers, instrument transformers). Also, the
rules for the application of LNs and their associated
information are refined. The LNs are grouped according to the
functions they relate. The name of the group starts with a
specific letter: (A) for automatic control; (C) supervisory
control; (P) protection; (X) switchgear, (M) metering and
measurement; and others.
III. CONCLUSIONS
The IEC61850 is internationally accepted and gives clear
direction during the process of very intense automation of
substations and power plants. The standard is very exhaustive
and is dedicated to wide range of engineering areas – electric
power, communications and software. For electrical engineers
to be able to understand it, they need to gain same qualification
in the field of communications. To greater extent, this would
increase their ability to design and maintain entirely or partly
the automated electric power plants and substations.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The research presented in this paper is a result of a project
in Technical University of Varna as part of its research
activities funded by the Bulgarian State.
REFERENCES
[1] Kirrmann, H. Introduction to the IEC 61850 electrical utility
communication standard, ABBCH-RD, 2012.
[2] L van der Zel, Guidelines for Implementing Substation Automation
Using IEC61850, the International Power System Information Modeling
Standard, Technical Report, 2004.
[3] IEC 61850-3:2014. Communication networks and systems for power
utility automation – Part 3: General requirements
[4] IEC 61850-4:2011. Communication networks and systems for power
utility automation – Part 4: System and project management
[5] IEC 61850-5:2013. Communication networks and systems in substations
– Part 5: Communication requirements for functions and device models
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[6] IEC 61850-6:2010. Communication networks and systems for power
utility automation – Part 6: Configuration language for communication
in electrical substations related to IEDs
[7] IEC 61850-7-1:2011. Communication networks and systems for power
utility automation – Part 7-1: Basic communication structure - Principles
and models
[8] IEC 61850-7-2:2010. Communication networks and systems for power
utility automation – Part 7-2: Basic communication structure - Abstract
communication service interface (ACSI)
[9] IEC 61850-7-3:2011. Communication networks and systems for power
utility automation – Part 7-3: Basic communication structure - Common
Data Classes - Ed.2
[10] IEC 61850-7-4:2010. Communication networks and systems for power
utility automation – Part 7-4: Basic communication structure -
Compatible logical node classes and data classes
[11] IEC 61850-7-410:2012. Communication networks and systems for
power utility automation - Part 7-410: Basic communication structure -
Hydroelectric power plants - Communication for monitoring and control
[12] IEC 61850-7-420:2009. Communication networks and systems for
power utility automation – Part 7-420: Basic communication structure -
Distributed energy resources logical nodes
[13] IEC 61850-8-1:2011. Communication networks and systems for power
utility automation – Part 8-1: Mappings to Specific communication
service mapping (SCSM) - Mappings to MMS (ISO 9506-1 and ISO
9506-2) and to ISO/IEC 8802-3
[14] IEC 61850-9-1:2003. Communication networks and systems in
substations – Part 8-1: Specific communication service mapping
(SCSM) - Sampled values over serial unidirectional multidrop point to
point link
[15] IEC 61850-9-2:2011. Communication networks and systems for power
utility automation - Part 9-2: Specific communication service mapping
(SCSM) - Sampled values over ISO/IEC 8802-3
[16] IEC 61850-10:2006. Communication networks and systems in
substations – Part 10: Conformance testing