Communication and data flow

State: data flow reading is verified on the public SCL files (341 GOOSE and Sampled Values publishers and 511 subscriptions, each naming its publisher or why not). The Communication and Data Flow tabs and their edits are modelled: Electron tests with a real text model on hand-written files; the editor itself was not run on the public files.

Open the System editor

Run Open IEC 61850 System (title bar, or Ctrl+Shift+Alt+D) and pick an SCL file, or right-click the file's tab and choose Reopen Editor With... > IEC 61850 System. The editor has three tabs: Communication, Data Flow and Control Blocks (see Data sets and control blocks). It follows the editor's text: every edit goes to the text as one Undo step and is not saved.

By bay: narrow the Communication and Data Flow tabs to one bay of the Substation section, to the IEDs bound to it by LNode, or to the IEDs of no bay.

Communication

Every subnetwork, with:

• the IP, subnet mask and gateway of each access point;
• the MAC address, APPID, VLAN-ID and VLAN-PRIORITY of each GOOSE and Sampled Values control block.

Edit a value in its cell. Only that value changes in the file; a part the cell did not have is added with the indentation of the others; an empty or unchanged cell changes nothing. The checks' findings (an IP used twice, an address written wrongly, a control block that does not exist) sit on the row they belong to.

MinTime and MaxTime are shown, not edited here.

Data Flow

A matrix of GOOSE and Sampled Values control blocks against the IEDs that subscribe, with the number of signals in each cell.

1. Click a cell to list its signals.
2. Remove a signal from the list: the input goes from the subscriber, one Undo step.
3. Add Subscription asks for the logical node and the signals, and subscribes them as one change. A signal the IED already takes is not offered.
4. Inputs that take data from nothing in the file are listed with the reason, and open at the input.

Each input is matched to its publisher through the control block it names or, for Edition 1 inputs that name none, through the data set that carries the signal. Report control blocks have clients rather than subscribers and are not drawn in the matrix; they are in the Control Blocks tab.

Try it: open an SCD where P1 publishes GOOSE gcb01 and P2 subscribes. The Data Flow tab shows the cell P1 gcb01 against P2 with its signal count; the Communication tab shows the IP, MAC, APPID and VLAN of each access point.

What was verified

• On the public files: every GOOSE and Sampled Values publisher and subscription read; on the Siemens IEC 61850 System Configurator 7.20.50 and V5.80 SCDs, all 48 subscriptions find their control block.
• The by-bay filter on a 31-IED demonstration station.
• Electron tests: rows and values, a cell edit and its Undo, a duplicate IP flagged on its row, adding two signals as one change, removing a signal, unresolved inputs, a broken file.

Limits

• The editor draws every row; a station of 50 IEDs or more is untested.
• Adding an access point or a subnetwork is done in the text.
• The intAddr given to a new input is the signal's name, which vendor tools may not expect.

Not verified

• Real stations of customer size; vendor tools reading the subscriptions written here; Windows.