IEEE Electrical Power & Energy Conference

Tesco has closed out the year with a bang, and has presented its final paper “Duo-Domains of IEC 61850” at the IEEE Electrical Power & Energy Conference (EPEC) in Calgary, Alberta. The theme of EPEC 2014 was the Partnership Between Industrial Users and Power Providers.  Alberta has a large oil and gas industrial base, and combined with the province’s numerous electric utility providers, there was a well informed audience. Tesco’s paper was focused on the dual-domains of IEC 61850, which compared and contrasted IEC 61850 applications across the industrial and electric utility domains. There is no doubt synergies to be found across both domains, and each industry has lessons learned that ought to be shared. Thank you for all those in attendance and appreciate your insightful questions.

IEC 61850 was initially developed for the power domain, and because of its success it is creeping into other applications, such as distributed energy resources. IEC 61850’s mechanisms are mature and have the flexibility to adapt to process and power automation applications. Recent trends such as the adoption of IEC 61131 and the creation of a Modbus mapping are good indicators of its future success in the industrial domain. The concept of profiles will help with this migration and with a bit of pressure from the industrial community, the gap between “power automation” and “process automation” will quicklydisappear. Thiscommontechnology platform will increase the competitive landscape within the industrial domain – which is currently dependent on proprietary protocols – and will ultimately benefit the user’s bottom line. The power and industrial communities can share design philosophies, products, as well as the cost savings that come along with having a common technology platform. No longer is the day where we ask, “Is this an industrial product or a utility product?, and the same applies to system integration services. IEC 61850 may have been designed for the power domain, but it won’t be long before we see it revolutionize the industrial domain.