IEC 61850 Embedded Modules Comparison - KALKITECH and Beck

Feature	SC123-LF from Beck	SYNC2000-OEM from Kalkitech
Speed	96 MHz	190 MHz
RAM	8 MB	32 MB ( 64 MB option )
Flash	2 MB (8 MB on SC143)	256 MB
Serial ports	4 TTL (Rx, Tx, RTS, CTS signals on each)	4 TTL ( Full modem signals on port-1, Rx, Tx, RTS & CTS on other 3 ports) + Console port with RxD & TxD
Other interfaces	I2C SPI CAN 2.0 USB	I2C
Ethernet interfaces	1 - 10/100BaseT Phy signals 1 – MII interface signals	1- 10/100 Base T Ethernet connector
GPIOs	34 GPIOs	Upto 19 GPIO's and co-exist with TTL Lines
Analog inputs	NA	2 AIs
Type	BGA single chip	Board with 30 pin connector & Ethernet connector interface.
Form Factor	25 * 25 * 5 mms	55 * 63 * 18 mms
Power Consumption	2W maximum	2W maximum
Voltage needed	3.3 V	3.3 V
Protocol support	IEC 61850, IEC 104, DNP3.0, Modbus, IEC 101,103, Profibus etc.,	IEC 61850 and Supports another 24 protocols including IEC101,103,104, DNP 3.0 and Modbus
GOOSE Performance	Meets IEC 61850-5 requirements	Configurable for all GOOSE Performance Levels
Conversion Support	Available	Available
Logic Support	IEC 61131 programmable engine	Supports major functions only
Integration & Time to market	BGA solutions Needs more time. Board solution can be implemented in hours.	Easy integration through simple board within 2 weeks
Configuration & Diagnostics	Available	Available
NERC/CIP Compliance	Not Known	Compliant
IEC 61400-25 Compliance	Compliant	Compliant
Certifications	Planned	Products using Kalkitech OEM Board & Firmware has been Certified at KEMA, CPRI test labs by various customers
Development Kit	Avavailable (Pre-developed and only configuration required)	Available (Pre-developed and only configuration required)
SCL / IED Tool	ICD Designer; Configuration of client/server by SCL file	Available with Kalkitech ICD Manager and SCL Manager
TCO	$	$

Note: The specification of Beck IPC is based on publicly available content and inputs from Karlheinz Schwarz of Netted Automation. 

Communication Standards in Indian Power Sector - Coming of age

Time is a great leveler. 5 years back, we were struggling to get our standardization acts together in power system communications. Indian standards committees were more forced to accept international standards because, manufacturer's professed the greatness and customers evaluated and made themselves sure of its utility, rather than a collective, systematic and consistent effort at standard adoption, creation and implementation.

Last week as the BIS LITD10 seminar on standardization in control center and the subsequent LITD 10 sectional committee meeting drew to a close, i was atleast positive that even if we are slow, we are in the right direction. Combining this with how India went about adopting DLMS/COSEM as its national standard, with an India specific companion standard, things are slowly getting into place.

I was very impressed by the joint view point of the power industry players to not name all the new working groups created as smart grid groups, and there-by focusing on the bread-and-butter problems our Industry faces and make a road-map for the next 5-10 years, rooted in reality, and not rooted in problems of another market outside, and at the same time willing to incorporate the fundamental aspects of what is happening in the standardization space globally.

Smart Grid Interoperability Panel & Grid Interop

Smart Grid Interoperability Panel and Governing Board were elected and put in place to kick-start the ambitious smart grid project. The US Government grant for smart grid of 3.4 Billion were announced last month. The stimulus money, the SGIP and the Grid Interoperability Conference and the Smart Grd Cybersecurity report and the grands announced together with an equivalent or more contribution from Utilities really have put on schedule the Smart Grid roll out in US.

The Smart Grid support as part of Stimulus and the enhanced interest in the stakeholder community is pushing the standards initiative like never before. The time consuming and often diverse and duplicate efforts of various standards bodies is suddenly finding their activities being brought under a common umbrella. Always standardization that is driven more by regulation and government interest of a bigger goal brings about faster and better results, compared to efforts that are driven by the manufacturer community and perceived needs of a given segment. The Grid Interop agenda and meeting is a good indicator on how under the Smart Grid umbrella most of the protocol bodies and stakeholders participated and discussed common issues, which earlier would have got discussed at separate forums.

The Smart Grid after effects are being seen in the R-APDRP program in India, where one hears about how this program can lead to a future Smart Grid. The Smart Grid definition being so broad, wide and vague, it is very difficult to re-orient a program that has very specific objectives as in India, to drive towards a future of Smart Grid, without specific thought being put from a goal perspective into the program. However CIM / 61850 and Cyber Security focus will surely help this program

IEC 61850 and SmartGrid

The more one reads of the smart grid efforts in US and other parts of the world, and the high paced standardization efforts within the NIST / IEEE / IEC system, it looks more and more that IEC 61850 will get submerged within the smartgrid movement. Smartgrid gives hope of adding lot of value and technology to the Industry and maybe what was required to get the power industry to re-invest in technology and innovation of a different kind after so many years in slumber.

However is it good for IEC 61850 itself, it is hard to say, for now one sees all the major people within the TC57 and the 61850 working group getting overtly involved with smart grid standardization efforts and the product manufacturers and utilities, the key drivers of IEC 61850 in Europe, trying to grapple with how to make their pie out of the smartgrid, it looks more and more apparent that IEC 61850 innovations will have to for some time be sub-servient to the Smartgrid bandwagon effect, and when the din dies down, we will either have IEC 61850 standing tall and ready for more, or it getting swamped in a new wave of technology, regulatory and standardization efforts that makes it struggling to stand on its own.

IEC 61850 Year 2008 – A Year That Was

IEC 61850 had a great year 2008. The expansion of the standard in terms of end customer adoption and vendor support has been stupendous. This has been further enhanced by the new developments within the standardization body to extend the boundaries of IEC 61850. Also, there has been interesting off-shoots in terms of adoption of IEC 61850 in different types of applications outside of it's conventional or intended domains.

The announcement by Siemens that it has commissioned more than 1000 IEC 61850 substations and more than 50000 IEC 61850 devices sold talks a lot about how the market for IEC 61850 and the adoption of the standard has expanded globally. The fact that IEC 61850 and the new substation technologies provided the developing countries a way to bypass one generation of technologies and the expanding market making the products cost competitive have been some of the interesting aspects of the market development.

Listed below are some of unique aspect's of the evolution of IEC 61850 in 2008:
1) ICE 61850-7-420 in smart grid vehicle – Electric cars are basically battery storage systems that could act as a distributed power source to the grid on demand. These systems can be managed using the IEC 61850-7-420 DER standard. http://www.smartgridvehicle.org/
2) IEC 61400-25 announces the formation of an user group in september 2008. The IEC 61400-25 standard enables communication basis for monitoring and control of wind power plants. The standards extends the work done under IEC 61850 and extends it to wind power domain.
3) CPRI opens an Independent Interoperability Test Lab and Certification Lab with UCA approval in Bangalore India.
4) STRI opened an Independent Interoperability Test Lab for IEC 61850, to support Nordic Utilities and Industries with the standard and adoption. http://www.stri.se
5) IEC 61400-25-4 approved as an International Standard. The other parts already standardized included IEC 61400-25-1,2,3 and 5.
6) IEC 61850-80-1 approved as an International Standard. The IEC 61850-80-1 Technical Specifications provides guidelines for information exchange between IEC 61850 and IEC 60870-5-101 and IEC 60870-5-104 protocols.
7) IEC 61850 and IEC 61499 – There exists a case for integrating the Function Block support of IEC 61499 into the IEC 61850 domain, so that distributed intelligence maybe possible.
IEC TC57 WG 10, responsible for IEC 61850 to consider adopting IEC 62439 (Industrial Communication Networks: High availability automation networks) redundancy concepts.
8) IEC 61850 and IEEE C37.118 Integration – There are standardization discussions and works on looking at integrating IEC 61850 and IEEE C37.118 so that WAMS systems and IEC 61850 systems can exchange information seamlessly.

Towards a positive standardization culture

Standards can be as good as the quality of people and the diversity of inputs that go into the standardization process. If the quality of people and the diversity of experiences and backgrounds in the relevant field that they come from are not good, then the standardization process will have an output that is not world class. So also, the inputs that are considered while formulating a standard at its various stages to validate assumptions and assimilate complex practical situations that will be encountered in actual field implementations, then the standardization process will not be world class.

In India, the standardization process that is driven by BIS has a general mandate to follow the IEC / ISO standards, especially after the WTO rounds for removing trade barriers and it is felt that country specific standards create trade barriers. This has resulted in a general trend towards adopting IEC standards in totality as Indian standards. However whether it removes trade barriers or create new trade barriers is a question that only time will answer.

To be able to make best of this prevailing situation requires Indian standardization efforts to reach new level from where it is today, by actively participating in International standardization efforts as a voting member, creating a culture within Indian Industry and Universities to actively participate in such activities, creating a mechanism for frequent interactions and ensuring that the right people are given the right platforms so that we have a culture that transcends time and drives the next round of growth of this country.

It is important to be a voting member of all committees of ISO / IEC, since being in a globalised wolrd, there is rarely a standard that does not impact India and hence we have to be part of what-ever is happening around the world. We have to send representatives from India for all discussions / conference meetings etc., and ensure that in all technical committees of the International bodies, an Indian representation is present.

It is important for us to participate actively in standardization efforts, drive the requirements, be testing ground for new standards and also ensure that our industry and university are in synchronization with what is happening in the committees. For this we have to ensure that, there is a domestic standardization activity that is robust and active, that creates a platform for our best people to participate, debate and form a community that is able to share ideas, bring together good minds to the effort, and make available forum's for standardization debates in the various conferences that happen in India. This brings to the front a set of people who can actually be our representatives in International standardization activities. Like the western countries, we need to work towards a target of having a dis-proportionate number of our representatives in the standardization committees.

If we are able to work on these goals, we will be in reality be laying the foundation for a culture that enables our country to contribute to the global standardization effort commensurate with our capabilities as a nation, and also create a positive environment that helps the country internally in its various other efforts.

Prasanth

Sorry state of Indian Standards - II

Can Standardization and India ever go hand in hand?. Or can a developing country make a standard?. Does it have the technological and process maturity to define a standard?. Does WTO definition of follow the IEC/ISO for reduced entry barrier actually create more entry barrier for developing countries?. Is the fault of the same lies actually with the developing countries?.

I am sure many of these questions are controversial and many people would like it to remain un-answered. Can India ever have a mature and competitive environment which fosters standard creation?. I was attending the BIS National Mirror Committee for IEC TC57. The interaction during and the general feedback we received from the BIS as well as the other participants were indicative of the maturity of Indian standardization. Our major effort still focuses at copying the international standards as it is, and if required add a few small variants to suite Indian conditions and publish as the Indian standard. At least under the TC57 efforts, our national committee participation is very poor, there are very few companies who want to be in the national committee and those who are members rarely attend. The national committee also does not have a program to promote the standards, elicit feedback from user communities and evolve a discussion and mechanism that ensures that standards actually gets popularized and used, that goes beyond the draft circulation and request for comments. The end result, at-least in the power sector, we do not have very advanced standardization initiatives.


This can be directly linked to the low level of push from the Indian industry, both the suppliers and customers in the power industry, who are more and more happy with using what is used else-where rather than investing time, effort and energy in understanding, adapting and creating a local market that is mature and competitive. The low level of participation in these efforts implies the utilities are not aware of and the impact of standardization. There are very few people within the Industry who track standards. The end result is an adoption, rather than an adaptation; Even though we are a big user community we are still not able to contribute or change the direction of the standardization to suite Indian conditions; We are not able to evolve a robust and active discussion and information sharing mechanism on the standardization itself; resulting in a poor standardization culture overall.

At BIS, i also see rarely national or internationally renowned experts in the National Committee's. The focus is more on organizations. Globally experts on standards committees are also well sought after consultants the subject and there-by make a living out of the standardization itself for themselves or as brand ambassadors of their organizations. A far cry from the situation in India.

Indian Power Industry is still system integration or manufacturing oriented with technology and IP coming from outside to a great extent, but very little product or own IP oriented. Until we are able to change the scenario in this Industry, with the fraternity who actively develop products and technology and who are visionaries and drive forward standardization for global and domestic competitive advantage, we will have to live with a standardization effort that is another department in the government, whose primary importance is what matters to the general public. Quality of food and civil supplies, and maybe the global wars of IBM, Microsoft and Sun fought in Indian shores, and in Indian ministries. Not the basic intent and interest to build an ecosystem that fosters standardization.

If we in India do not realize the importance of standardization and actively participate in it, and BIS becomes a nodal agency that promotes such interest, rather than ending up as being a secretariat that conducts meetings, and set itself targets for its various sectional or national committee's to achieve specific objectives every year, future of Indian standardization in power is very bleak.

However i am sure this is good news for companies in the developed world who actively sell to India. And it is what WTO prescribes and developing countries like India have accepted to adopt, follow IEC/ISO; If it was that we follow these standards after a good debate on the same, and having a very active and contributory participation in these standardization efforts right from the beginning, i would have been happy to adopt the same. However when you do that, without such an active participation, and an internal discussion and when your standard committee does not have a detailed agenda that looks at broad-basing the efforts, what we have is a blind cut-and-paste, and that does not augur well for the future of Indian standardization.


Maybe India as a country and a developing / modern economy based on intellectual capital is still evolving and it has not reached the maturity level to address issues like standardization in its completeness. I am sure there are many who will dispute this statement, stating in many other areas and especially metering, Indian specifications are more complex and advanced. However i do not think that by extending the tolerance ranges, we are actually doing standardization, but only condoning the bad state of our distribution network and making amendments for the same in our specifications and asking manufacturers to meet those specifications. Maybe what we should be questioning is why we are having those in the first place and is it not adding to our losses in distribution sector and a national waster?. Should we not go in depth and try to improve the network rather than change the specifications?.

IEC 61850 and Sorry State of Indian Standardization Initiatives

India is one of the largest users of IEC 61850 Standard in its substation automation projects together with China. However Indian contribution to the standardization efforts is almost nil.

The standardization efforts of IEC TC57 is conducted by the National Mirror Committee and BIS or Bureau of Indian Standards is responsible for the creation and maintenance of National Mirror Committees for TC57. LITD 10, Power System Control and Association Communications is the National Mirror Committee that should look into efforts of IEC 61850.

However, this committee is mostly dormant and does not involve technical experts in IEC 61850 who can contribute to the IEC 61850 Standardization efforts. India being one of the initial adopters of this standard, the Indian market a very large market for IEC 61850, and the IEC 61850 expanding its scope of work into newer areas, it is imperative that if Indian industry, academia and research institutions want to take mileage and create competitive advantage and drive these efforts, they actively involve in these efforts. This is the only way, India ever can dream of getting into the same league of China in product development and localization in power technologies, that enhances its long term strategic capability to compete with European and American products as well as enter these markets on equal footing. The fact that we have a large enough domestic market should be a chance one should never let go and the Indian government should ensure that the Industry makes good use of the millions of dollars of tax payers money that is spent in India being member of ISO and IEC.

As Professor Sadagopan mentioned at the MAIT / BIS Seminar and interactive session during the visit of ISO Secretary General to Bangalore on 7th December 2007, being part of the IEEE standardization efforts is a recognition of ones technical competence and acceptance by your peers. However, in India, the same is not so with the BIS National Mirror Committees for ISO and IEC.

MAIT Director General in the said meeting, mentioned that the Indian industry participation in standardization for IT (Information Technology) in the national mirror committees is nil, it also indicates the state of Indian IT industry. Indian IT sector is still services focused as well as externally focused with a conformance attitude to western standards, with very less product innovations or product research and development efforts happening. Without an ecosystem being created that promotes efforts by experts in the Industry to participate and contribute to these efforts, and a realization that being part of standardization is a competitive advantage that will drive businesses in the future, be it services or products or IP, there is no way Indian industry is going to be take active part in these efforts. To be part of standardization efforts require expertise that is beyond the skill set of business process or technology adoption, but a more in-depth involvement in the way the technology and business process will drive the future, and collaborating in building a basis for this future road-map.

The fact that BIS comes under the Ministry of Food is another indicator about the overall government focus which is primitive and the need of the day 30-40 years ago, but not now in a services and technology driven market growth. And driven by Bureaucrats rather than technologists in most cases is another indicator of the state of standardization in India, where administrative control and direction is driven by government priorities rather than market necessities. After independence, maybe the key factors that drove standardization might have been food and consumer affairs. However today the standardization globally has expanded beyond these, and India standardization efforts also should broaden its horizon too. There is still a great need to protect the consumers and hence BIS has a big role to play. However, maybe there are highly technical areas or domains where these need to move out of BIS, for eg., the standardization for communications should not be handled by BIS but by a separate national communication standardization body, and maybe CEA (Central Electricity Authority) should drive the efforts in the Electrical Industry.

Without active participation, and maybe multiple standardization efforts that addresses the relevant technical needs of the various committees of ISO / IEC, and an effort in creating an ecosystem right across our academic, national research labs as well as industries, Indian contribution to these efforts shall never be note-worthy. It would be good, if BIS leaves some of the tasks in standardization to some other National Labs or centers of excellence within the Industry, Academia or Central Research Institutes in the relevant area. This would surely help in ensuring that the drivers and expertise is available for the relevant topics.

Also looking at the constitution of some of the National Mirror Committees, the effort seems to be more on accommodating the large companies or industries or National Labs that work in a specific space. However, there has been no effort in ensuring that the people who are active in the standardization efforts are experts in their own merit in the said space. Most of the standardization effort participants in most developed economies are independent experts and consultants or small technology company players in addition to representatives from large companies and national labs. Without such efforts, there is going to be no way forward. Having MD's and CEO's of various companies, may not really ensure that there is contribution happening. As in the IEEE, an expert who contributes on his free will, would also likes to be acknowledged for his or her contribution, that peer recognition what he or she values more. However, if you have the senior management in the Committees, there is no way an expert is going to do a good job at it, other than ensuring that what his Company or MD or CEO wishes are suggested. Unless India is able to create such an ecosystem that foster interaction and discussion among experts and active industry and academic participation, our standardization efforts are never going to come out of the current state of copy/paste or conformance.

A reference to PAC World magazine IEC 61850 cover story indicates the years of discussion and debate that went into the development of IEC 61850, and shows how important it is that there is open and free flow of debate and discussion in Indian mirror committees before we ever get into a stage where India will be able to rightfully contribute. However if BIS, the Indian industry and the academia does not get involved in creating an ecosystem that discusses threadbare IEC 61850 as it is today and participates in the international standardization efforts, there is no way India is ever going to get out if its perpetual state of being in conformance to IEC 61850 standard rather than being able to contribute to standards.

As Mr. Bryden, the ISO Secretary General mentioned, India should move from being in-credible India to credible India and hopefully we all will reach there sometime in the next century.

Protection Automation and Control Magazine

Protection Automation and Control Magazine pacworld first edition for summer of 2007 has been published. Spearheaded by Alex Apostolov, this magazine promises to be bring more active and open discussion about IEC 61850 and Protection, Automation and Control in general. The industry do indeed need an avenue for technical and expert discussions and opinion makers to bring out their points of view on the current and future challenges it faces.

In his editorial for the first edition, Alex talks about how the IEEE transactions used to have questions and comments on every paper and the authors comments on the same at the end of the paper. He mentions how behind the iron curtain a few decades back as a young protection engineer it gave Alex a global view and meaningful sense of these transactions and the context in which the paper needs to be seen. Now this is no longer a practice that IEEE transaction follows. As he rightly says in all the limited conferences on this subject globally, due to paucity of time and the busy schedule of the modern day world and its intent on accommodating as many things as possible in a very short time, there is no more open discussions and debate on most topics that concern the protection, automation and control engineers of today.

He mentions this to be one of the key objectives of pacworld. However, in addition to discussions and awareness building, it is also important to address some of the other burning facts like increasing academic and research interest in power systems such that more new students opt for these courses, as well as to involve and upgrade the technical knowledge and awareness of the main stream utility engineers and power system experts in the new technology developments in this space.

I believe these objectives to be a very noble and right intent and if this intent is kept alive and remains the driving force of the magazine in the days to come, it shall surely be a great point of convergence of thoughts and minds of the Industry and shall be a must read for all.

PACWORLD Magazine Online - www.pacw.org

IEC61850 - Long way to go

IEC 61850 - Expanding Horizons

I do agree with the point that IEC61850 is and will be expanding its horizons especially after redefining its scope from Substations to complete power utility. With object models of Wind and Hydro already available & models of DER, standards of substation - substation and substation - control centre communication & mapping to web services are already underway, it will find a completely different focus. We can even expect revolutionary changes after the possibility of SCL to migrate to CIM to provide complete models needed for an EMS/ DMS systems.

But looking back, can we say that objectives of IEC61850 are completely achieved? Can we say the IEC61850 devices are completely interoperable? I feel that many vendor implementations had made this standard to deviate from its objectives. IEC61850 had provided options for private LNs, data & GGIOs for handling the situations which cannot be handled by the standard models. But now the scenario had reached in such a level that all the vendors are finding it much easy to have private models rather than going for the standard LNs, data or formats which will not help in achieving goals of a global standard. What is the purpose of the total interoperability, if a vendor IED cannot accept a GOOSE because there is a time stamp element? Are the test certificates and interoperability events helping any bit in providing true inter-operability? I feel interoperability still remains a key issue in migrating to IEC61850.

Another area I want to point out is the engineering efforts for IEC61850 which was hyped to be much less comparing with the native mechanisms. But if we notice the tools and systems available for engineering IEC61850 today, it is much oriented on the standards rather than looking from the users’ angle for the configuration. The user has to follow complete & elaborate 61850 standards to achieve the complete configuration. The second is the dependability of vendor tools for configuration is too high that each user needs to know all the vendor tools to achieve even simple configurations like GOOSE mapping. So the current scenario is such that IEC61850 has increased the engineering efforts rather than reducing the same, if one were to do an independent engineering based on the standard.

I personally feel TC57 WG10 had never foreseen such a huge welcome for IEC61850 which made the standard to have some limitation. The standard could have been made with Substation configuration language (SCL) completely compatible with the UML based CIM models. Today, with all implementations working well with the SCL & problems in migrating to CIM, it will require a long way for sending the model information to EMS/DMS systems.

In spite of all these problems, the high benefits in using the standard in comparison with native protocols, is driving the same a long way through. Tissues (technical issues) forum for IEC61850 had come good for the standard which takes users opinion and problems to address the same in revisions. Let’s hope new revisions can throw some light to these problems & come up with effective ways to ensure the interoperability.