Relay protection, SCADA, Metering, and Cybersecurity for electrical infrastructure.
UCA International Users Group has opened registration for 61850 IOP 2026, the annual interoperability testing event for IEC 61850 equipment and software tools. For the first time, the programme includes multi-vendor MPLS network testing and functional verification based on Basic Application Profiles (BAP) per IEC 61850-7-6 Ed.2 and IEC 61850-90-30:2025.
A practical guide to three Wireshark features that dramatically speed up digital substation traffic analysis — display filters, frame marking, and custom IED names.
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.
Most digital substation projects are single-vendor, single-site proofs of concept. RTE — the operator of France's 2,600-substation transmission grid — decided to do something harder: build a fully digital, multi-vendor PACS from scratch, act as its own system integrator, and scale it across the entire network.
IEC TC57 WG17 has held its kick-off meeting to develop a new document describing how IEC 61850 can be used for monitoring and control of electrical and engineering systems in data centres.
CIGRE WG B5.69 published TB 949 — the most comprehensive survey of real-world IEC 61850 process bus deployments. 55 projects, 42 specialists from 29 organisations. Key findings and what they mean for your organisation.
How to use the dumpcap command-line utility for stable long-term network traffic capture — without Wireshark freezes or crashes.
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.
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.
Siemens announced SIPROTEC V at DISTRIBUTECH 2026 — a software-defined protection and control system consolidating up to 60 hardware IEDs on a single server. We look at what changes for substation engineers, and what Siemens has not yet disclosed.
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.
Top-down IEC 61850 engineering — formalized in TR IEC 61850-90-30:2025 and TR IEC 61850-7-6 (Ed. 2) — moves specification errors from commissioning to the design phase, before a single IED is selected or procured. This article explains the mechanics of the five-step process: what each step produces, what files are exchanged, and why the sequence achieves outcomes the conventional bottom-up approach cannot.