Taxonomy feed.
The developers of the libIEC61850 library have released a fix for a bug that could cause valid GOOSE messages to be discarded by the receiving application. The problem affected version 1.6.2 and was caused by an incorrect Ethernet frame length check. The messages could be transmitted over the network successfully and appear in Wireshark, yet never reach the GOOSE subscriber's handler. This matters above all for developers of products supporting the IEC 61850 standard that use libIEC61850.
In digital-substation projects most attention goes to GOOSE, SV, PTP and the network. But there is another important layer — MMS exchange and IEC 61850 reports, through which SCADA, HMI, gateways and monitoring systems receive telemetry from IEDs. In practice the problems here are deceptively simple: the MMS connection is up, the device is reachable, the client «sees» the server — yet data does not update, some signals disappear, events are duplicated, or the report control block does not activate at all. This article covers the sharpest problems with report control blocks (RptEna, ConfRev, a block already taken by another client, TrgOps, a DataSet mismatch, duplication from the buffer via entryID and too much faith in the SCL file) and a practical principle: cross-check the SCL file, the device's actual MMS model and a PCAP capture together.
A contractor hands over an SCD file claiming it matches the actual device configuration. But how do you verify that quickly and provably when there are 76 IEDs on site and no permanent monitoring system? A field case from Tekvel: the verification module in the Tekvel Magic software automatically compared the device configurations against the SCD and produced an engineering deviation report covering DataSets, GOOSE, Sampled Values and MMS reports in 15 minutes.
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.
In March 2025, Salt River Project commissioned the first confirmed production deployment of virtualized line differential protection using Routable Sampled Values over MPLS WAN, with ABB SSC600. The WAN-connected virtualized relay proved both faster and more consistent than a conventional microprocessor relay on direct fiber.
On 24 September 2025, NamPower commissioned Sekelduin — a 132/66/33 kV indoor switching station near Swakopmund, Namibia, built by ACTOM as Africa's first fully digital substation with IEC 61850 process bus end-to-end.
IEC TC 57 has approved the New Work Item Proposal for IEC 61850-8-3 with ~95% of national committees voting in favour. The new standard will define a direct mapping of ACSI services onto WebSocket and JSON — a third SCSM alongside MMS and XMPP, designed to extend IEC 61850 beyond the substation.
The number of Ethernet switches with integrated IEC 61850-8-1 server increases. Manufacturers do not only implement standard logical node classes according to IEC 61850-7-4 but also those ones introduced by IEC 61850-90-4 technical report. These switches do also support buffered and unbuffered reporting mechanisms. Seems like the closest future is the one where IEC 61850-8-1 (MMS) communications will replace communications over SNMP (being widely used at the moment). This will allow for integration of Ethernet switches in process control systems the same way as it is done with IEC 61850-8-1 pr