IEC 61850 testing in Edition 2 - a systematisation

Since IEC 61850 became the widely used standard for substation communication, with many implementations, testing has become an important issue. The standard, in its current version, covers some possibilities and approaches for testing in general and for measures of performance. Nevertheless, some issues have arisen which needed to be clarified with the new edition of the standard. Edition 2 (available in 2012) offers many more possibilities and sophisticated details. Due to the huge number of prospects and different places where testing can be located and marked, systematization might be helpful. Test bits, test quality, test indications, test mode and test behaviour are all practically explained. Ongoing projects with the usage of sampled values and GOOSE (Generic Object-Oriented Substation Events) raise other questions. Distinguishing between "real" and "simulated" signals is a requirement, the possibilities for that are described in this presentation as well. The standard tries to summarize all these issues in a quite complex table with additional remarks. The presentation looks beyond this table and explains possible scenarios for testing client-server-communication for SCADA purposes as well as GOOSE and sampled values. Experiences in current implementations are presented, as well as an outlook on advanced concepts to be used in substations according to IEC 61850 Edition 2.