IEC 61850 Engineering is with out doubt a specialist domain but increasingly becoming a "conventional engineering" methodology.

The “end-to-end engineering” system engineering process and tool suite must support:

multiple engineers
in multiple departments
- Condition Monitoring Systems,
- Plant Automation and Control,
- Asset Management,
- Event Investigation,
- Security systems
- Protection
- SCADA
- ...
in multiple organisations
- Asset owner
- consultants
- contractors
over multiple phases
- Specification
- Proof Of Concept
- Procurement
- Configuration
- Factory Acceptance Testing
- Site Acceptance Testing
- Commissioning
- Operation
- Maintenance Testing
- Replacement
- Refurbishment
- Expansion
encompassing multiple primary plant and secondary equipment projects
coherently deployed over the next 100 years of each substation
incorporating hundreds of functions,
provided in dozens of different IED box types
from dozens of different vendors
in a manner that enhances reliability, reduces risks and is Reusable Engineering.

The objective for all of this is More, Faster, Less, Less, Higher, Lower, Lower ¹

With that in mind it is clear no one person can know all.

Equally reading a few books and picking up a bit of help via blogs or web sites will only go so far.

"You learn something new every day". Over my 30+ years as a protection engineer, I doubt there is a day where I haven't learnt something new in some form or another ... 40+ years x ~230 working days/year is way more than 9240 things I've learnt ... and there is so much more TO learn!!. So I would never claim to be an expert as "all knowing, super guru", but I am proud to be a specialist protection engineer professional also specialising in IEC 61850 Engineering since 2004.

Sometimes IEC 61850 specialist engineers may come across as being somewhat difficult, demanding .. or to some others, just plain weird.

IEC 61850 engineers deal in modelling of the real world and then sending messages in the virtual world about what is happening in the real world.

Yet what we deal with is often not rocket science by any long shot of the imagination.

Defining the data structure of a device in a common semantic seems just such a logical thing to do - probably not all that important when dealing with an electromechanical relay with 3 settings (pick up, time multiplier setting and instantaneous setting) and the input being current and the output a contact. Nor is creating a message to send to another device - probably not all that difficult if sending and receiving devices were always the same.

The trick is always understanding the implications of interactions and the application in specifying and providing effective protection solutions.

Sometimes those tricks are clouded by "historical tradition/policy/standards" and so the base philosophy may have been obscured or have been developed in response to problems that should not have been invented under the correct application of the Standard. Sometimes these need to be re-thinked from first principles as to what the problem/objective/purpose was and what the modern solutions would be (and so I would say "hysterically historical standard procedures" ).

The information contained herein is by no means a full explanation of all IEC 61850 applications and theory. However I have provided a few snap shots of my insight into IEC 61850 engineering principles which I have probably had recent cause to blog about somewhere and which you may find useful. These pages no doubt do not present "THE" answer for any particular or generic application but if you wish specific advice thereto, please contact me so we discuss a potential consulting assignment to satisfy your needs.

¹ More, Faster, Less, Less, Higher, Lower, Lower

More Projects completed in

Faster Time with

Less Money for Capital expenditure with

Less Resources required for any individual project with

Higher Reliability and

Lower operational cost over the substation lifetime and

Lower refurbishment/augmentation effort and costs

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