Monday, April 17, 2017

What is a Function in IEC 61850?

The term "Function" is used in a variety of flavors throughout the standard series IEC 61850. If you ask five experts, you may get six answers.
IEC TC 57 has proposed (57/1863/DC) to develop a new Technical report IEC 61850-6-100: "SCL Function Modelling for Substation Automation"
A "function" is more or less a synonym for operation or action ... as described in Wikipedia:
"A function model or functional model in systems engineering and software engineering is a structured representation of the functions (activities, actions, processes, operations) within the modeled system or subject area."
In my seminars I compare IEC 61850 with Logistics:



IEC 61850 defines simple and more and more complex functions. A schedule according to IEC 61850-90-10 defines a set of quite complex (or comprehensive) functions. In most cases the functions defined by IEC 61850 are just functional components that are used as bricks to build a comprehensive application function.
The brick-concept of IEEE 1550 (UCA 2.0) indicated the use of the standard models: the Bricks (which are now the Logical Nodes in IEC 61850).
IEC 61850-7-2 Services define functions (called services) that provide information logistics, e.g., for accessing the device information model, allow exchange of any value made available by a device based on events for real-time and non-real-time applications, or services for controlling a controllable item like a circuit breaker or a fan.
Functions may be composed using the standard IEC 61499 (Function blocks) as described in the following papers:
V. Vyatkin, G. Zhabelova, N. Higgins, K. Schwarz, and N.-K. C. Nair, Towards intelligent smart grid devices with IEC 61850 interoperability and IEC 61499 open control architecture, IEEE Conference on Transmission and Distribution, New Orleans, April, 2010
 N. Higgins, V. Vyatkin, N. Nair and K. Schwarz, “Intelligent Decentralised Power Distribution Automation with IEC 61850, IEC 61499 and Holonic Control“,IEEE Transactions on Systems, Machine and Cybernetics, Part C, 40(3), 2010,
J. Xu, C.-W.Yang, V. Vyatkin, S. Berber, Towards Implementation of IEC61850 GOOSE Messaging in IEC61499 Environment, IEEE Conference on Industrial Informatics (INDIN’13), Bochum, July 29-31, 2013
Click HERE for more papers.
More to come ... stay tuned to this blog!

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