Digital Substation is an engineering publication focused on IEC 61850 automation, protection systems, and digital grid intelligence.
IEC 61850 interoperability testing is under way in Utrecht, where equipment and software from multiple suppliers are being integrated into common protection, automation and control applications. Participant reports now cover functional protection tests, network configuration from SCD files and virtualised protection.
A new and important mechanism for validating SCL files is emerging in the IEC 61850 engineering process: OCL (Object Constraint Language), a language for formally describing constraints and rules for the objects of an information model.
Conventional CTs hardwired to two multifunction IEDs per 132 kV bay from different manufacturers, GOOSE in place of interlock wiring, a virtualized SCMS, and a standard drawing set that ships with every tender. The design has now supported the construction of 90 substations in Dubai.
A new version of Skunkworks Network Analyzer — a specialised Wireshark build with extensions for analysing IEC 61850 traffic — has been released on the OTB Consulting Services website. The update fixes the SclExtractor, adjusts the semantic data displays and removes outdated IEC 61850-90-5 terminology. Useful for engineers who diagnose GOOSE, Sampled Values and MMS on digital substations.
On 12 May 2026, Hitachi Energy and TEİAŞ announced the commissioning of Türkiye's first digital substation pilot. The scope is one feeder bay.
"Shall support IEC 61850" is too general a wording. We look at where to check IEC 61850 conformance certificates today, what a conformance certificate really confirms, how a registry of 1,650 test records is structured by editions and roles, the seven parameters to check in a certificate, and how conformance testing differs from interoperability testing — and how to phrase a requirement in a specification instead of a vague phrase about "standard support".
IEC Technical Committee 57 and CIGRE Study Committee B5 have established a Category A liaison. The change formalises the route by which CIGRE work on PACS, process bus, virtualisation, and engineering practice reaches IEC 61850.
CIGRE's first dedicated framework for virtualised IEDs will not publish until Q1 2028 — but the vPAC pilots that have to align to it are being commissioned now. Its scope is already public, through the working group's Terms of Reference and a framework article refeatured in ELECTRA 345 (April 2026): what is mandatory, what is deliberately out of scope, and what every 2026 vPAC pilot should already be doing in response.
UK Power Networks' Constellation project replaces bay-level protection relays with virtualized software on substation computers, using IEC 61850 process bus for local protection and R-GOOSE over 5G for wide area coordination. The first site is operating in Maidstone, Kent, with five more planned across South East England.
Interoperability testing of substation configuration tools (SCT and ICT) has evolved from a supplementary element of the first IOP in 2011 to the central axis of the entire test programme by 2024. At IOP 2019, only 10 out of 159 ICD files (6.28%) passed validation without errors.
Most digital substation projects are single-vendor, single-site proofs of concept. RTE — the operator of France's 2,600-substation transmission grid — decided to do something harder: build a fully digital, multi-vendor PACS from scratch, act as its own system integrator, and scale it across the entire network.
IEC TC57 WG17 has held its kick-off meeting to develop a new document describing how IEC 61850 can be used for monitoring and control of electrical and engineering systems in data centres.
How to use the dumpcap command-line utility for stable long-term network traffic capture — without Wireshark freezes or crashes.