WiseOwl^™
                                        The Secure Automation Developer's Resource

by John T. Tengdin -- Editor-in-Chief
May 2000

At the last Utility Initiative meeting, held in Grand Rapids, MI on May 11 & 12, a proposal was brought forward by Bill Blair, EPRI, who is funding a study for the startup of a UCA Users/Testing Group. This new users group would have as its objective: “To facilitate UCA understanding and its wide spread use.” It would also “procure test capability and provide a virtual test environment for product certification.”

A very optimistic schedule was presented. Here are a few highlights:

Those experts who have been involved in the DNP Users Group Technical Committee felt that this schedule for the completion of the test procedures in one year was extremely optimistic. It would be optimistic even if a users group had already been formed and was working with stable documents.

From our perspective, there are several fundamental flaws in the proposed approach. As a starter, the underlying assumption is that the UCA documents – particularly GOMSFE (Generic Object Oriented Models of Substation and Feeder Equipment) are stable and that a rigorous change control mechanism is in place. This is clearly not the case. Yet lack of stability is the primary reason that many potential users are sitting on the sidelines, waiting for the technical dust to settle. They see continuing changes at each Utility Initiative meeting, as new ideas surface. There does not exist, either today or in the proposed users group, a technical committee to take control of the documents.

 The model for such a technical committee already exists in the DNP Users Group. That committee meets by phone as often as every two weeks to thrash out solutions to technical issues. However, the DNP 3.0 standard is not changed frequently. After review of proposed changes by the Technical Committee to ensure backward compatibility, the changes are voted on by the entire Users Group only once a year. There is stability. This stability has been key to the widespread acceptance of DNP 3.0.

The UCA 2 documents have been made available to the IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) Technical Committee 57 Working Groups 10, 11, &12 as input to the development of IEC Standard 61850 for substation communications. The hope was that these Working Groups could move quickly to develop and publish an international standard. The reality is that the work on the IEC standard is progressing slowly. It is your editor’s opinion that the full IS (International Standard) version of IEC 61850 will not be published before 2002.

But those involved in the Utility Initiative (vendors and utilities alike) cannot afford to wait until 2002 for a stable document. They need stability before they risk hundred of thousands of dollars in widespread implementations. To that end, the initial focus of the proposed UCA Users Group should be in establishing a powerful technical committee, one with the authority to take control of changes to the UCA documents. The other tasks, including the promotion of UCA for other applications and product certification, should take a back seat until a means to assure stability is in place.

Its your time for an opinion. Lets hear from you, we will reflect your anonymous opinion in the IEEE, IEC, CIGRE and Utility Initiative venues.

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Last modified: Sunday August 01, 2004 .