The IEC870 is an international standard for system monitoring and telecontrol in utilities for water distribution, gaz and electricity distribution and energy power system. The straton IEC 870 stack supports both IEC 60870-5-101 (serial) and IEC 60870-5-104 (TCP/IP) slaves.

In the last few years, especially in the energy sector, a protocol standard has established itself which is now considered a “must-have” in substation automation and which is supported by virtually every component producer. We are talking about the international standards 60870-5-101 for serial communication, published in 1995 by the IEC, and 60870-5-104 for communication via TCP/IP, published in 2000.

Both protocols are identical on the appliction layer, this means they have the same reference data structure. Thanks to that, the configuration and implementation for both serial communication (-101) and TCP/IP networks (-104) is an unique configuration tool in straton.

The protocol IEC 60870-5-10x defines that messages and values must be sent spontaneously from Slave (Controller) to Master (PC) after a change, so there is no Polling procedure. After establishing the connection, the master sends a “general interrogation command" to the slave in order to get the current state of all data points. From this time on, the Slave watches for changes of the data points and sends only if required.

The configuration tool is totally integrated in the STRATON workbench. The declaration of the variables is done through a powerful variables editor and/or through .csv files using the import/export feature.