Electricity distribution substations: ProSoft Technology^® launches a new Modbus TCP/IP to IEC 61850 Gateway

The ProLinx ‘Modbus TCP/IP’ to ‘IEC-61850’ gateway has been designed for remote control of substations in electricity distribution systems. It enables communication between the Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs) on one side (on an IEC-61850 network) and the Schneider Electric Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) on the other side (on a Modbus TCP/IP network).

The configuration software (ProSoft 61850 Configuration Manager) is provided with the gateway. It is used to develop and manage gateway configuration files. Extensive diagnostics are also available via this configuration software for the gateway and for both Modbus TCP/IP and IEC-61850 networks.

This software tool uses IED configuration files to import complex IEC-61850 data structures into the controller. GOOSE, Report Control Blocks, and MMS Read messages provided by IEDs are written to the Modbus TCP/IP server on change of state. This way, users are not required to develop communication logic or tag structures in their PLC projects. In short, this software creates ‘Variable’ files and ‘Function Block’ files for automatically importing into Unity Pro projects for Schneider Electric’s Quantum or M340 processors. All IED data attributes are available for convenient mapping to Modbus registers. Here are some of the main specifications of the gateway:
- Import CID and SCD files.
- Drag and drop IEC-61850 Data Attributes for Modbus mapping.
- PLC Tag names are automatically created.
- Print mapped tag list.
- Export Tag file (.CSV).
- Export Variable (.XSY) and Function Block (.XFM) files for use with Unity Pro.
The gateway configuration file is stored on an industrial SD card. This allows for rapid configuration by moving the SD card from one gateway to another.

The Modbus TCP/IP driver allows multiple independent, concurrent Ethernet connections. The connections may be Clients, servers, or a combination of both Clients and servers. On The IEC side, 45 IEDs can be controlled simultaneously. The gateway supports a Simple Network Time Protocol (SNTP/NTP) client service that can synchronize the gateway’s time by periodic update requests to a Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) system. The user can configure the SNTP/NTP server details in ‘ProSoft 61850 Configuration Manager’. The resolution of the time is in milliseconds (ms).

This new gateway is available with one or two Ethernet ports (product reference is respectively PLX81-MNET-61850 and PLX82-MNET-61850).

As usual, ProSoft Technology has been developing its new gateway in tight relationship with PLC (Programmable Logic Controllers), PAC (Process Automation Controllers) manufacturers and System Integrators. As a result, the gateway is following the standard and its recommendations with the User’s expectations and his applications in mind.
The configuration software provided with the gateway is highly appreciated for “demystifying” and getting the complex IEC-61850 protocol into operation.
As a reminder, ProSoft Technology is an independent (family owned) company, only focussing on communications for industrial automation.

IEC-61850 protocol is used for remote control of complete electricity sub-stations. IEC-61850 is the international standard that defines the hardware and communication requirements for all devices within substation automation. The standardized naming conventions imposed by the IEC-61850 standard improve interoperability between systems provided by diverse manufactures or created by multiple system integrators.

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