by Craig Palmer, PowerComm Solutions, USA
Early this January 2023, while the Destroyer USS Orleck sat docked in the St. John’s River astride the Hyatt Regency, inside the hotel and conference center a fleet of working group meetings were being held as part of the IEEE Power & Energy Society’s (IEEE PES) annual Joint Technical Committee Meeting. This year saw the attendees back in Jacksonville, FL during the week of January 9.
The Power Systems Communications & Cybersecurity Committee (PSCCC) conducted twenty-nine meetings during the week, with some groups putting a bow on their work and others just beginning to outline the scope and purpose of new projects. The PSCCC Main Committee meeting closed out a great week of work late Thursday morning.
Since returning to in-person meetings at the JTCM in 2022, more and more PSCCC attendees have returned in-person, with some still attending remotely. At the Main Committee meeting on Thursday, the PSCCC committed to providing virtual access to these tri-annual meetings for the foreseeable future.
The committee also remembered their colleague and friend Dennis Holstein who passed away in October 2022. Dennis was a long-time contributor to work in the committee’s scope and was remembered for his kind demeanor towards and mentorship of many of the members in attendance (to say nothing of his technical mastery). He will be missed.
January 2022 saw another turn of the Officer wheel at the Main Committee level, when a new past-Chair and Secretary were anointed (the previous Secretary becoming Vice-Chair, and the Vice-Chair, Chair). Associated subcommittees of the PSCCC saw some officer rotation as well. Under the new Chair, the PSCCC intends to continue its focus on improvements in: consistency; openness and accountability; and developing the leadership pipeline.
Now to the business of the week.
The Power Line Carrier Subcommittee (C0) met to continue work on the revision of IEEE Standard 643 – Guide for Power Line Carrier Applications and began in earnest the work on the upcoming revision of IEEE Standard C93.4 – Standard for Power Line Carrier Line Tuning Equipment (30 kHz to 500 kHz) Associated with Power Transmission Lines.
The Wireline Subcommittee (E0) met jointly alongside its PSCCC counterparts during the JTCM for the first time and continued a deep technical discussion related to their work on IEEE Std 367-2012, Recommended Practice for Determining the Electric Power Station Ground Potential Rise and Induced Voltage from a Power Fault with joint participation of the IEEE PES Power System Relay Committee (PSRC).
Due to a recent change in the area of responsibility of IEEE’s Standards Coordinating Committee SCC-21 (now SC-21), the Protocols and Architecture Subcommittee (P0) made a motion to the Main Committee to become the responsible subcommittee, under the PSCCC, for the joint work on IEEE Std 2030, Guide for Smart Grid Interoperability of Energy Technology and Information Technology Operation with the Electric Power System (EPS), End-use Applications, and Loads. The motion carried.
The Cybersecurity Subcommittee (S0) had two motions before the Main Committee, each of which carried successfully. The first was for working group S2 to form a ballot body for IEEE P1711.1, Serial SCADA Protection Protocol (SSPP) Guide for using Secure SCADA Communications Protocol (SSCP) and Serial SCADA Protection Protocol (working group anticipates a request to go to ballot at the May ’23 meeting). After some discussion on the appropriate path forward, working group S5 made a motion to transfer their work on IEEE Standard C37.240, Cyber Security Requirements for Power System Automation, Protection and Control Systems to ISA-99 WG14 where it may find a more comfortable home. (ISA 99 is Industrial Society of Automation – Industrial Automation and Control Systems Security).
The S0 subcommittee will be hosting a panel session at the IEEE PES General Meeting! Keep an eye out for a panel session on Resilient Control and Operation of Power Grids against Cybersecurity Threats: Challenges and Solutions between July 16-20, 2023 at PES GM in Orlando FL.
The next meeting of the PSCCC will be held in Las Vegas NV during the week of May 8, 2023. More information can be found on the JTCM website at https://pestechnical.org.
Be sure to follow @IEEE_PES_PSCC on Twitter and IEEE-PES-PSCC on LinkedIn for other news and announcements from the Committee!
Biography:
Craig M. Palmer received his Bachelor of Science in Electronics & Computer Engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) in 2011. He has worked on power system protection and communications since then, first with RFL Electronics in Boonton, NJ. He is presently Lead Application Engineer at PowerComm Solutions, where he focuses on Power Line Carrier applications for high-speed transmission line protection schemes. He is a participant in the IEEE Power System Relaying & Control Committee (PSRC), a member of the Power Line Carrier subcommittee (C0) in the Power System Communications & Cybersecurity Committee (PSCCC), present Secretary of the PSCCC, and a Senior Member of IEEE.
