IEC 61850 is a new worldwide accepted standard that defines the communication between electrical switchgear, control equipment in substation automation and the related system requirements.

What are the advantages of IEC 61850?

Because many different communication protocols are being used in substation automation, protocol converters are commonplace.  Equipment vendors are facing significant challenges interfacing communications, leading to higher development costs for hardware vendors and increased integration and maintenance costs for network operators.

IEC 61850 has been devised to send messages between sender and receiver in an optimal way, making communication as direct as possible to avoid losses in performance and functionality. IEC 61850 standard provides a consistent standard unifying substation automation and distributed power generation equipment, from the switchgear right up to supervisory control and monitoring functions.

COPALP IEC61850 stack

The Energy and Water industries require more and more complex protocols and control applications to meet the growing demands for more information, more often. COPALP is developing a range of components for its customers in order to facilitate the integration of industry-standard protocols and applications and is simplifying the configuration process by providing the end customer with easy to use graphical tools. The IEC61850 is one new component to the COPALP offer that comes in addition to the existing one like IEC60870-101 slave, IEC60870-104 server and DNP3 slave protocols.