IEC 61850 – the standard to digitalise and automate power grids

IEC 61850 has developed to become the central foundation for the automation and management of decentralised renewables-based electric grids.

From its appearance as a standard for substation automation over twenty years ago, IEC 61850 has evolved as an indispensable underpinning to the development of electricity grids to meet the digitalisation, decentralisation and decarbonisation demands of a net zero energy system.

While automation between substations and between substations and control centres are still central, it also has opened up a range of grid-related use cases including condition monitoring diagnosis, the transmission of synchrophasor information, power quality and distribution automation.

Energy Transitions Podcast: How IEC 61850 is revolutionizing the utility industry

Backed by state-of-the-art communications networks these also open the way for true multi-vendor interoperability.

Despite this potential, IEC 61850 still remains largely unadopted at scale, with the principal challenges identified as the availability of time synchronisation, the new bandwidth demands and the need for new and more shared expertise across the utility.

Why power utilities are embracing IEC 61850

With this in mind Nokia, which has played a leading role in deployments globally, has developed a communications infrastructure blueprint that extends connectivity from sensors on poles and in substations, from the FAN and the substation LAN, across the WAN to a data centre fabric connecting the OT applications with the IT compute pool.

“Utilities must embrace a new communications infrastructure that links IEC 61850 assets across the grid, on utility poles in the last mile distribution system and inside the substation to software applications in the control centre and data centre,’’ advises Hansen Chan, Nokia’s IP Product Marketing Manager.

Webinar recording: What’s driving utilities to embrace IEC 61850?