Overview of standards

IEC 61850 is a general transmission protocol for the protective and control equipment in electrical substations in medium and high voltage systems (station automation). This communication is physically based on Ethernet technology. The server-client communication is currently supported in TwinCAT via MMS (Manufacturing Message Specification) and GOOSE.

The communication stack, as shown in the illustration below, is implemented layer by layer in the TwinCAT PLC in the form of libraries.

IEC 61850, which was published in 2004, is strictly object-oriented and its data model is hierarchically structured. The various data models are explained in the following chapter.

Application example

In this case, the use of IEC 61400-25 enables all wind turbines from different manufacturers in a wind farm to communicate with a central station.
Standardization avoids the use of vendor-specific protocols, which would lead to increased application expenditure. BECKHOFF supports this method with the implementation of IEC 61850 or IEC 61400-25 respectively in the TwinCAT Automation suite.