by Richard Adams, PSC, UK

News from CIGRE Study Committee B5 Protection and Automation
SC B5 participated in a very successful and well organized CIGRE Cairns 2023 International Symposium, 4th – 7th September 2023, attended by more than 1300 delegates. SC B5 held 6 paper presentation sessions and also presented a tutorial entitled “Applying synchrophasor technology for protection of the power system”. SEAPAC 2023 (South East Asia Protection Automation Conference) was held in conjunction with the symposium.
During the SC B5 annual meeting in Cairns, the location of the 2025 SC B5 colloquium was selected as Osaka, Japan and three preferential subjects were voted as follows:
- Interoperability of IEDs of different manufacturers and technologies integrated in one PACS
- PACS Life Cycle Performance and Longevity
- Experiences and possibilities on revised principles and policies related to modern protection IEDs
Three new WGs were also approved:
- PACS interfaced asset management and condition monitoring using innovative technologies
- Recommendations and constraints for development and interfacing of virtual IED implemented in PACS
- Protection, Control and Monitoring principles of synchronous condenser and generation with fly wheel
The ToRs for the above groups are currently being finalized with a view for approval and request for members in the New Year.
SC B5 received more than 160 synopses for the Paris Session 2024; these synopses have now been reviewed and authors notified of the results. Of these, 110 have been accepted across the two preferential subjects as follows:
- PS1: Practical experiences and new developments of Process bus:
- Experience feedback and implementations of IEC 61850 based process bus
- Synergies with virtualization and hardware consolidation
- Use of process-near interface Intelligent Electronic Device (IED) and Low Power Instrument Transformers (LPIT)
- PS2: Acceptance, Commissioning, and Field Testing for Protection, Automation and Control Systems:
- Current practices and experience feedback
- Challenges and Perspectives for a new era of Protection, Automation and Control Systems
- Skills, tools and testing methods
The 2024 Paris Session will take place 25 to 30 August next year, between the Paris Olympic Games, which will be held from 24 July to 11 August 2024, and the Paralympic Games, which will take place from 28 August to 8 September 2024 (3 day overlap).
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has been pre-empting the main hotels and reception venues in Paris, while it finalizes its own requirements and as a result availability for the Paris Session week is very poor.
Some hotels have guaranteed the availability of many rooms for Paris 2024 to Central Office, and it is hoped that this will be confirmed soon.
If you are planning to attend the Paris Session next year, please bear this in mind and try to book accommodation well in advance and also keep an eye out for any general emails from CIGRE regarding availability of accommodation.
Progress to complete some longstanding Working Groups remains good with an expectation to finalize another 2-3 for publication by the year end.
Rannveig Loken’s term as Chair of SC B5 will come to an end as the Paris Session 2024 finishes.
The incoming Chair, from September 2024, has recently been confirmed as Volker Leitloff (France). Volker has had a long association with CIGRE SC B5 through the Strategic Advisory Group and Working Groups which led to his successful candidacy for chairmanship, and SC B5 will continue to be in good hands.
Biography:

Richard Adams is Team Leader – Engineering with PSC in UK. He has a degree in Electronic and Electrical Engineering, is a Fellow of The Institution of Engineering and Technology (FIET) and a member of the organizing committee for the IET DPSP (Developments in Power System Protection) conference. He is currently Secretary for CIGRE Study Committee B5, having been involved in CIGRE since 2003, initially as UK Regular Member, then later as a member of the Strategic Advisory Group. In 2020 he was awarded the CIGRE Distinguished Member award. Richard is married with three children and likes to get out walking if there’s time.