This follow-up course is designed to take an entry-level student beyond a simple introductory understanding of IEC 61850 and into the practical engineering workflow used in real digital substations. The emphasis is on explaining the system step by step in very simple language, while still introducing the student to the actual file types, communication methods, and testing ideas used in the field.

Why this course is needed

An introductory IEC 61850 course explains what the standard is and why it matters, but the next practical step is to show how an actual IEC 61850 system is engineered, configured, and tested in a substation environment. Industry training beyond the basics commonly moves into Substation Configuration Language (SCL), communication services such as GOOSE, MMS, and Sampled Values, and practical testing and troubleshooting.

This makes a system-level, multi-vendor course a stronger next step than a course focused only on one relay model, because the student first needs to understand the engineering process that applies across many Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs). A relay-specific drill-down such as an SEL-710 example can still be used inside the course as a worked example, but it should support the system explanation rather than replace it.

Learning Objectives

At the successful conclusion of this course, you’ll be able to identify and discuss:

• Explain, in simple terms, how IEC 61850 is used to engineer and operate a digital substation.
• Describe the meaning and purpose of Substation Configuration Language, or SCL, and identify the role of ICD, CID, and SCD files.
• Explain what an Intelligent Electronic Device, or IED, is and how logical devices, logical nodes, data objects, and data attributes are used to organize information.
• Distinguish between GOOSE, which means Generic Object Oriented Substation Event, MMS, which means Manufacturing Message Specification, and Sampled Values, and explain where each is used.
• Describe, at an introductory level, how communication networks, redundancy, and time synchronization support IEC 61850 systems in substations.
• Explain the basic idea of IEC 61850 testing, including simulation, test mode, and simple troubleshooting steps.
• Read a simple SCL-based engineering story from the system level down to a single IED configuration.