Digital Substation is an engineering publication focused on IEC 61850 automation, protection systems, and digital grid intelligence.
CIGRE Study Committee B5 has opened Working Group B5.90, tasked with writing the first dedicated guidelines for commissioning and testing of fully digital protection and automation control systems. The Terms of Reference, published in January 2026, cover FAT, SAT, and operational testing for IEC 61850 process bus architectures.
The UCA IUG conformance registry documents 1,650 test records across three IEC 61850 editions. To read the numbers, you need to know the policy behind them: who sets the transition deadlines, when Edition 2-only testing ended, and why 2023 produced a record spike. This article traces the process.
In 2023, fourteen European TSOs signed a common statement on IEC 61850 engineering and demonstrated a working proof of concept. Their five-step top-down process — backed by two new IEC technical reports — changes how utilities, IED suppliers, and tool vendors interact. Here is what they built and why it matters.
XML Schema validation checks structure — it cannot verify that a GOOSE subscription references a valid dataset or that a logical node contains required data objects. Object Constraint Language (OCL) fills that gap. IEC TS 61850-6-3, published in 2025, defines how OCL rules should be written and applied to IEC 61850 XML files, laying the groundwork for consistent, formal SCL validation across tools.
There is quite a few projects we've met, where each IED publishes single GOOSE message with huge dataset instead of having several GOOSE. We decided to understand which solution is preferrable?
GE releases new wide-area features on the field-proven Multilin UR platform of protection & control solutions.
Can DANEO 400 from Omicron electronics be effectively used at commissioning and maintenance stages as the only IEC 61850 instrument?
GOOSE-messaging has been covered a lot in many technical papers and to add anything valuable to the subject is rather difficult. But we will try. And functional constrained data will help us with that.
There are several applications that can be used for monitoring IEC 61850 traffic in the Ethernet network. But there is one free-of-charge option everyone should know about.
When configuring GOOSE and Sampled Values communications it is useful (and sometimes is a must) to have the possibility to check VLAN and Priority tags. Whether your network adapter driver strips tagging or not will define the availability of these parameters not only while using Wireshark, but also other specific tools for analysis of GOOSE and Sampled Values traffic (Omicron SVScout, Omicron IEDScout, GOOSE Inspector, etc.). Today we will see how to make Intel network adapters not to strip this important info.
Siemens presented the new series of arc-fault protection devices 7XG31. The new series includes 7XG3124 RA24 device which is capable of transmitting GOOSE messages on detection of arc-faults in different compartments of enclosed switchgear. It is possible to...