Relay protection, SCADA, Metering, and Cybersecurity for electrical infrastructure.
CIGRE's first dedicated framework for virtualised IEDs will not publish until Q1 2028 — but the vPAC pilots that have to align to it are being commissioned now. Its scope is already public, through the working group's Terms of Reference and a framework article refeatured in ELECTRA 345 (April 2026): what is mandatory, what is deliberately out of scope, and what every 2026 vPAC pilot should already be doing in response.
What IEC 61869-9 actually requires, and where the boundary lies between "still synchronized" and "no longer synchronized". The article unpacks the "2 → 1 → 0" misconception about SAMU/NCIT behavior on PTP loss, the link between clockClass, timeTraceable and SmpSynch, and how a complex protection function should react when one of its source streams loses synchronization.
ICSForge has been released under the GPLv3 license — an open-source tool for validating the coverage of ICS cybersecurity tools. It supports 10 industrial protocols (including Modbus/TCP, IEC-104, S7comm, OPC UA, IEC 61850 GOOSE), 536 scenarios and 11 ready-made attack chains, all mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK for ICS matrix (coverage 68 of 83 techniques, 82 %).
UK Power Networks' Constellation project replaces bay-level protection relays with virtualized software on substation computers, using IEC 61850 process bus for local protection and R-GOOSE over 5G for wide area coordination. The first site is operating in Maidstone, Kent, with five more planned across South East England.
A practical reference for capture filters in Wireshark when working with IEC 61850 traffic. Why a display filter is not enough on a digital substation (especially of the process-bus generation), how a capture filter differs from a display filter, how the BPF (Berkeley Packet Filter) syntax is structured, and ready-to-use filter recipes for GOOSE and SV — from selecting by EtherType and OUI to APPID and multicast addresses.
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.