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.
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.
8 out of 10 configurators fail to fully recognize SCD files. We analyze the confRev attribute in GOOSE and SV: what happens when the value does not match the expected one, and how this nearly derailed the commissioning of a real project with 43 IEDs.