Driving grid innovation under increased regulatory pressure, intense cybersecurity threat, and rapidly rising demand for renewables integration

Date: 20th-24th March 2023

Format: In-Person

Venue: Park Plaza Amsterdam Airport

Group Booking Discount – 10% discount for 3+ delegates, 30% discount for 5+ delegates and 50% discount for 10+ delegates booked from the same organisation at the same time!

Fundamentals of IEC 61850 Workshop 

Monday 20th March 2023Registration: 10:00Programme: 10:30 to 17:30

The IEC 61850 standard is an extensive and complex set of international standards specifically designed for substation automation and the smart grid. Now universally recognised as the de-facto standard for power utility compliance, it presents as many challenges as it does opportunities.

During this workshop Christoph Brunner, Convenor of IEC TC 57 WG 10 provides a comprehensive and in-depth insight into the building blocks, key applications and optimal operations of the standard within the substation environment and beyond.

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Workshop Leader

Christoph Brunner

Christoph Brunner

President of it4power

Convenor of TC57 WG10

Christoph Brunner graduated as an electrical engineer at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in 1983. He is a Utility Industry professional with over 25 years of industry experience with both knowledge across several areas within the Utility Industry and of technologies from the Automation Industry. He is president of it4power in Switzerland, a consulting company to the power industry. He has worked as a project manager at ABB Switzerland Ltd in the business area Power Technology Products in Zurich, Switzerland where he was responsible for the process close communication architecture of the substation automation system. He is convenor of the working group (WG) 10 of the IEC TC57 and member of WG 17, 18 and 19 of IEC TC57. He is IEEE Fellow, member of IEEE-PES and IEEE-SA. He is active in several working groups of the IEEE-PSRC (Power Engineering Society – Relay Committee) and member of the PSRC main committee and the subcommittee H. He is international advisor to the board of the UCA international users’ group.

Workshop Programme

Session 1: Fundamentals of IEC 61850: Main features of the standard and implications for the utility engineer

This session is a short introduction to IEC 61850 for newcomers. The concept of IEC 61850 is introduced with its key objectives and features to support interoperability, free configuration and long-term stability. A comparison with other communication standards will be made, and the impact on the utility engineer will be clarified. Edition 1 will be reviewed in relation to its application in different domains. The main features of IEC 61850 communication, application modelling and engineering process will be introduced including GOOSE messaging and Process bus with sampled values.

 Session 2: Evolution of the standard: Improvements, wider smart grid applications and suitability for new domains

Understand how the standard grows from Edition 1, the backward compatibility aspects, new features and functionalities, the rate of take up within vendor products and feedback from utility implementations. In this session the major new features introduced will be discussed. The session will also talk about IEC 61850 implementations across the wider smart grid, as well as in new domains such as hydroelectric power plants, distributed energy resources and wind turbines.

Session 3: Advanced maintenance testing: Challenges of testing in a live substation

Understand the challenges of maintenance testing in live substations and how the various features available in IEC 61850 can help to address those challenges. Consider testing for various topologies, understand how to use simulation and hierarchical control of test mode. The session will also address how the test source of InRef can be used to solve some of the issues. Requirements for modelling and engineering of the test system will be addressed.

Session 4: Advanced engineering process: How IEC 61850 is evolving to enhance interoperability of the engineering process

This session will examine the engineering process across the entire lifecycle of IEC 61850 systems. The challenges of the early implementations will be discussed and how user feedback is helping to gradually enhance the process. Learn, how extensions made to Ed 2.1 of IEC 61850 contribute to the improvement, understand how the specification process will evolve, to assure your automation system will work as expected. The session will address further ongoing work in CIGRE as well as EU-funded research projects.

Session 5: Cybersecurity Fundamentals for IEC 61850

Understand the basic cybersecurity issues and requirements for communicating with IEC 61850 protocols using the IEC 62351 cybersecurity standards, with a focus on authentication of connections, data integrity of messages and role-based access control for authorization of actions.

Session 6: Practical Demonstrations and Q&A

In this final session some practical demonstrations will bring to life the application of IEC 61850 and provide attendees with the chance to have all their questions answered in great depth and detail by the workshop leaders