The document 'IEC61850 ENTSO-E Profile introduction and Engineering Process Refinement' was recently published on the website of the European project OSMOSE (Optimal System-Mix of Flexibility Solutions for European Electricity), of which REN and R&D Nester are partners, integrated in a consortium including thirty two organizations.

This document was prepared under task 7.1 (interoperability), which explores the potential of the international standard IEC 61850 in the communication between intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) existing in substations, such as protection relays, bay units and central units. Interoperability between devices is extremely important, as it allows components of the same system to be purchased from different suppliers, with the inherent technical and economic advantages.

One of the characteristics of this standard is the existence of a description language (SCL - System Configuration Language) allowing the global configuration of protection, automation and control (PAC) systems, even though it involves configuration tools from various manufacturers, that is,  there is also interoperability between configuration tools.

The purpose of the document is to present an engineering process, that is, a set of steps for the configuration of the PAC system, developed by the project team, and which constitutes an improvement over what is defined in the IEC 61850 standard.

This engineering process includes extensions to the IEC 61850-6 (the part of the standard that defines the SCL), which will be validated on a demonstration platform installed in the R&D Nester laboratory, where IEDs from various manufacturers are installed, having the specification and system configuration been made by independent tools. In this process, all steps of the development of a PAC system project are considered: standardization, specification, procurement, configuration and also installation and commissioning.

The project team combined the work developed by the ENTSO-E working group, which created a specification tool capable of generating function and signal templates, which will then be imported by specification and configuration tools. On the other hand, the results of this task will be communicated to the community (standardization bodies and industry), so that the IEC 61850 standard can be improved, with the correction of gaps and ambiguities.

This way, TSOs will be able to use the IEC 61850 standard, not only at the configuration step of PAC systems, but also may use it as a support for the specification and consequent procurement. These developments will thus enable the technical and economic efficiencies mentioned above.