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
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

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].

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B. Part 4: System and Project Management requirements. The responsibility is distributed among several
This part of the standard defines a system for project engineers:
management of utility automation systems (UAS), including • Engineer responsible for the project requirements;
substation automation systems (SAS) [4]. The UAS usually
operates in an environment which typically includes the • Engineer responsible for the system architecture, based
following (see fig. 2): on the project requirements;
• Telecommunication environment: network control • Equipment vendors;
centers, subordinate systems, teleprotection;
• System integrators – engineers who ensure the
• Human as local operator; interoperability of the different UAS components and
the process environment;
• Process environment: switchgear, power transformers
and auxiliary equipment. • 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

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Fig. 4. Topology of substation automation system
many LNs. – system configuration description; CID – configured IED
description; SED – system exchange description. Clause 10 of
The functions are divided in three levels: station, bay/unit this part explains the functionality of the software tools needed
or process (see fig. 4). The process functions interface to the for system specification and configuration.
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 E. Part 7: Basic communication structure
on the primary equipment of their own bay. There are two The main architecture which IEC 61850 adopts is the
types of station level functions: (i) functions related to the division of the data definition and the processes by creating
process, which use information from more than one bay and data objects and processes which are independent from any
being able to act upon all of them; (ii) functions providing protocols [7-12]. Therefore, the particular definitions allow the
interface to the station operator or a remote control center. organization of the data objects and the processes in terms of
any protocol which is capable to meet their requirements.
The numbers in a circle from fig. 4 denote the different
interfaces between the levels: (1, 2) protection data; (4) Part 7-1 defines the modelling methods, the communication
analogue data; (5, 6) control data; (7) data exchange between principles and the information models which are used in the
substation level and remote engineer’s workplace; (3, 7, 8, 9) next subparts.
data exchange; (10, 11) control data exchange. Interfaces 2 and Part 7-2 standardizes an abstract communication service
11 are not within the scope of IEC 61850. interface between client and remote server or between
publishing device and subscribed devices (for sampled values
D. Part 6: Configuration Description Language for transmission).
Communication in Electrical Substations Related to IEDs
Part 7-3 defines common data classes used to describe
This part of the standard defines an object-oriented, XML
equipment models and functions for substations.
based language for automation system configuration, named
System Configuration description Language (SCL) [6]. A Part 7-4 refines the models by introducing compatible LNs
configuration file typically starts with the description of the for the substation equipment and data classes. It contains
primary electrical circuit equipment and their interconnections. detailed information for the used alphabetical designation of
After that, the LN, the functions and the communication LNs (relay protection equipment, registering devices,
between them are defined. The SCL code also contains the regulators, tap changers, instrument transformers). Also, the
configuration of each specific IED and from that perspective rules for the application of LNs and their associated
every IEC 61850 compatible device should be capable to be information are refined. The LNs are grouped according to the
configured with an SCL code. The following file types are functions they relate. The name of the group starts with a
defined: ICD – IED capability description; IID – instantiated specific letter: (A) for automatic control; (C) supervisory
IED description; SSD – system specification description; SCD

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control; (P) protection; (X) switchgear, (M) metering and [6] IEC 61850-6:2010. Communication networks and systems for power
measurement; and others. 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
III. CONCLUSIONS utility automation – Part 7-1: Basic communication structure - Principles
and models
The IEC61850 is internationally accepted and gives clear
[8] IEC 61850-7-2:2010. Communication networks and systems for power
direction during the process of very intense automation of utility automation – Part 7-2: Basic communication structure - Abstract
substations and power plants. The standard is very exhaustive communication service interface (ACSI)
and is dedicated to wide range of engineering areas – electric [9] IEC 61850-7-3:2011. Communication networks and systems for power
power, communications and software. For electrical engineers utility automation – Part 7-3: Basic communication structure - Common
to be able to understand it, they need to gain same qualification Data Classes - Ed.2
in the field of communications. To greater extent, this would [10] IEC 61850-7-4:2010. Communication networks and systems for power
increase their ability to design and maintain entirely or partly utility automation – Part 7-4: Basic communication structure -
Compatible logical node classes and data classes
the automated electric power plants and substations.
[11] IEC 61850-7-410:2012. Communication networks and systems for
power utility automation - Part 7-410: Basic communication structure -
ACKNOWLEDGMENT Hydroelectric power plants - Communication for monitoring and control
The research presented in this paper is a result of a project [12] IEC 61850-7-420:2009. Communication networks and systems for
power utility automation – Part 7-420: Basic communication structure -
in Technical University of Varna as part of its research Distributed energy resources logical nodes
activities funded by the Bulgarian State. [13] IEC 61850-8-1:2011. Communication networks and systems for power
utility automation – Part 8-1: Mappings to Specific communication
REFERENCES service mapping (SCSM) - Mappings to MMS (ISO 9506-1 and ISO
9506-2) and to ISO/IEC 8802-3
[1] Kirrmann, H. Introduction to the IEC 61850 electrical utility [14] IEC 61850-9-1:2003. Communication networks and systems in
communication standard, ABBCH-RD, 2012. substations – Part 8-1: Specific communication service mapping
[2] L van der Zel, Guidelines for Implementing Substation Automation (SCSM) - Sampled values over serial unidirectional multidrop point to
Using IEC61850, the International Power System Information Modeling point link
Standard, Technical Report, 2004. [15] IEC 61850-9-2:2011. Communication networks and systems for power
[3] IEC 61850-3:2014. Communication networks and systems for power utility automation - Part 9-2: Specific communication service mapping
utility automation – Part 3: General requirements (SCSM) - Sampled values over ISO/IEC 8802-3
[4] IEC 61850-4:2011. Communication networks and systems for power [16] IEC 61850-10:2006. Communication networks and systems in
utility automation – Part 4: System and project management substations – Part 10: Conformance testing
[5] IEC 61850-5:2013. Communication networks and systems in substations
– Part 5: Communication requirements for functions and device models

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