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.
