Happy as a "pig in mud" with DNP3 ...

Have you heard these sorts of statements :

• "DNP3 works fine for us .."
• "If IEC 61850 was a "killer ap" it might have some benefit we could consider"
• "We only make pragmatic decisions largely driven by economics"
• ENTSO-E: IEC 61850 doesn't work 120409_RDC-Statement_IEC61850_final.pdf

Sounds all fine but these are no different to the starting point for the thousands of substations already with IEC 61850 deployments - do they have a different type of human being and organisational drivers ?!?!

It is important to consider what would motivate a change in engineering process and technology choices:

How about saving 20% on the total cost of a new substation?

How about saving 50% on the cost of the next refurbishment/expansion of that substation
* adding that up on say a $1Bn per year cap ex will save you a COUPLE OF BILLION BUCKS over a few refurbishments/augmentations.
(Refer ABB paper Distribution 2001 Conference)

How about being able to replicate an entire bay's engineering without any drawing errors, without any wiring errors, just change the bay name, check the comms is working and switch the bay on - 5 minutes work (OK - a windfarm actually needed one hour to do ALL the engineering design and commissioning of three new bays to an existing IEC 61850 substation)

How about replacing an IED with some other IED (perhaps different vendor) using the same (IEC 61850) configuration file that was working in the old IED and just turn it on.

How about the SCADA system integrating a new bay just by also copying a bay in the scan list - no point names but a full semantic configuration with the only difference being the name of the bay

How about when an IED fails "at 3 am" (or any time) the technician can get the entire system back working as normal in 5 minutes without leaving his lounge room.

How about having up-to-the-minute (second) "as operating documentation" for the substation with full revision tracking

How about being able to seriously reduce risks of open circuit CTs (even keeping existing CTs)

How about reducing civil costs and footprint by replacing all the cable ducts and thousands of wires in the yard being replaced by a single LAN cable

How about incoprporating all utility communication needs more than just SCADA - this includes also have protection (DNP does no protection (smile) ), Automation of plant controls, Condition Monitoring, Distribution Automation, Distributed Energy Resources and even Electric Vehicles.

Oh, and not to forget that the newest additions to the T group Logical Nodes means we can apply it to water canals, locks, dams and water-pipelines as well as gas-pipelines, industrial control systems and even flying a plane ....

Well I suppose I could ignore all that and just keep using my DNP3 engineering even though just between 1990 and 2005 the I/O list in a sub increased 10-fold – it is great to be “happy as a pig in mud” – until you realise the mud is in an abattoir holding pen!

Besides new technology would mean having to learn new jargon, use new sophisticated integrated engineering tools which require me to "point and click" and perhaps spend a couple of hundred $K on training programs – and we all know that engineers went to Uni to learn everything they need to know and shouldn’t need training again …

It is more than eight years since IEC 61850 was released.
Twenty years since the development started.
There are several thousand substations from 11kV to 500kV (including Bradley in USA) with IEC 61850.
China is building “a sub a week” using IEC 61850
System contractors are using IEC 61850 by choice for industrial projects because it gives them a competitive advantage.

We know the technology works although us poor humans are still learning how to use it properly (evidenced by the ENTSOE and VLPGO statements that we may have not done it as well as we could in the earlier deployments)

Yet some utilities aren’t sure if they should …

Killer ap
Pragmatic economic decisions
– seems we have them …just need to accept them and get on with it.

The community want cheaper, more reliable power.
* definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

* when you are up to your neck in alligators it is hard to remember the objective was to drain the swamp. Might be a good start to stop feeding the alligators …

If you are only interested in SCADA comms and are happy with DNP3 - stick with it!  You can continue to be a "pig in mud" but just be aware the mud pen might be at the front door of the abattoir ...

… oh by the way one of the initial predecessors to IEC 61850 was EPRI’s UCA protocol which was a recognition in the early 1990 that we can’t sustain these limited protocol capabilities and everything needed a new semantic definition – lets not forget the drivers for a swamp solving initiative …

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