Digital Substation is an engineering publication focused on IEC 61850 automation, protection systems, and digital grid intelligence.
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.
IEC TC 57 distributed a proposal from ENTSO-E to add some features to IEC 61850 (57/1771/DC).
IEC TC 57 has published (57/1767/NP) a proposal for extending the System Configuration Language (SCL) to provide high-level direction in terms of how best to bind the HMI graphical objects with the IEC 61850 data objects/attributes using the configuration description language defined in IEC 61850-6. The concept willl be based upon the existing System Configuration Language (SCL) defined in IEC 61850-6, in addition to possibly incorporating other non-IEC namespaces such as the W3C's Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) namespace.
IEC TC 57 proposes a new work item (57/1768/NP) IEC 61850-7-7: Communication networks and systems for power utility automation – Part 7-7: Basic communication structure – Machine-processable format of IEC 61850-related data models for tools (proposed 61850-7-7). Closing date for voting: 2016-11-25.
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.
XML Marker - an alternative to simple text editing tools for overview of SCL files.