Iec 61850 Communication; Overview; Introduction - GE B30 Communications Manual

UR Family
Chapter 3: IEC 61850 communication

IEC 61850 communication

This chapter outlines the IEC 61850 communications protocol.
The IEC 61850 protocol applies when ordered with the product. Check your order code.

3.1 Overview

3.1.1 Introduction

This section contains a description of IEC 61850, an International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) series of documents
entitled Communication Networks and Systems for Power Utility Automation. The focus is on those features implemented
since UR 7.3x.
IEC 61850 is a series of international standards and technical reports applicable to power utility automation systems
(PUAS). It includes semantics, abstract communication services, specific communication services, performance
specifications, network engineering guidelines, configuration description methodologies, and engineering processes. The
objective of the standard is to provide a framework to achieve interoperability among the intelligent electronic devices
(IEDs) from different suppliers, and interoperability among software configuration tools from different suppliers.
Interoperability in this case is the ability for IEDs to operate on the same network or communication path sharing
information and commands, and for configuration tools to understand each other's configuration files. The standards can
be obtained from the IEC (http://www.iec.ch).
The UR supports a large subset of the IEC 61850 features. These are described at a high level in this chapter and include
the information model, GOOSE publish, GOOSE subscribe, buffered report server, unbuffered report server, and
Manufacturing Message Specification (MMS) query, read, write, and control services. In addition, the UR and the EnerVista
UR Setup software support IEC 61850 Substation Configuration Language (SCL) file import/export and merging. UR
releases 7.3x and earlier use edition 1.0 of IEC 61850. Releases 7.4 and later use edition 2.0. The edition 2.0 differs from
edition 1.0, particularly in SCL. Edition 2.0 GOOSE, Sampled Value, and Report messages GSSE, can be understood by
edition 1.0 devices, that is to say these are backward compatible. However, only edition 2.0 61850 configuration tools can
interoperate with edition 2.0 devices. GSSE, fixed GOOSE, and fixed report services of releases 7.3 and earlier are not
supported, and thus UR devices 7.3 and earlier using these features have to be converted to configurable GOOSE to
communicate with a UR 7.4 or later release.
The figure shows IEC 61850 as it pertains to an IED, such as a UR device.
UR FAMILY – COMMUNICATIONS GUIDE 3-1