by Craig Palmer, PowerComm Solutions, USA
The IEEE Power & Energy Society’s Power System Communications & Cybersecurity Committee (PSCCC) met in-person in during the week of January 8-11, 2024, in New Orleans, LA. A winter storm threw a bug into some members’ travel plans but by Monday all who planned to attend in-person were on-site.
Remote attendance via online meeting platforms continued to prove its worth as many members who did not attend in-person could still participate in the work. In total, 144 people who registered for JTCM indicated PSCCC participation.
The PSCCC’s January meeting series was part of the IEEE Power & Energy Society’s annual Joint Technical Committee Meeting (IEEE PES JTCM). Meeting jointly with the PSCCC were the Power System Relaying & Control Committee (PSRC), Nuclear Power Engineering Committee, Power System Instrumentation & Measurements Committee, Substations Committee, Transmission & Distribution Committee, and various related working groups (notably P1547). The next PSRC / PSCCC meetings for 2024 are May 13-16 in Buffalo, NY, and September 9-12 in Scottsdale, AZ. Following are some highlights from the January meetings in New Orleans:
Congratulations Herb Falk, new IEEE Fellow! During the Main Committee meeting on Thursday January 11, 2024, the PSCCC noted that Mr. Herb Falk was recently awarded the status of IEEE Fellow for “contributions and leadership in secure, reliable, and interoperable communication of the electric power grid.”
The PSCCC members expressed their appreciation for Herb’s contributions to the committee’s work, as well as his skill at lobbing carefully calibrated and good-natured “grenades” during meetings which often illuminate a contradiction or shortcoming in some work that needs attention. Beyond his technical contributions, many members expressed their appreciation for his leadership and guidance, Herb being a mentor to many involved with the PSCCC. Thank you, Herb, a well-deserved award!
- Power Line Carrier Subcommittee (C0): The C0 subcommittee received approval to form a task force to write a report on some of the latest challenges in applying PLC for transmission line protection. The working group will review PSRC’s “Special Considerations in Applying Power Line Carrier for Protective Relaying” and “Redundancy in Coupling Power Line Carrier Channels to the Power Line” and look to update some of that material with latest field experiences while adding some new “special considerations” facing power line carrier users in 2024. The first meeting will be in May 2024 in Buffalo, NY.
- Protocols & Architecture Subcommittee (P0): Working group P2 – IEEE Std 1815 – Standard for Electric Power Systems Communications-Distributed Network Protocol (DNP3) put forth a motion to go to ballot on their latest draft document; the motion failed before the main committee on Thursday January 11 due to questions over the document’s readiness for ballot; the working group will press ahead with its efforts to get this large standard complete and out to ballot sometime in the near future. Congratulations to Brittany Chapman, new P0 representative to the PSCCC Awards working group!
- Cybersecurity Subcommittee (S0): S0 working group S14 – HTTPS and TLS for Power Systems was restarted thanks to new chair Scott Lee. Congratulations to Justin Turner, new S0 representative to the PSCCC Awards working group!
- Hot topics at PSCCC: The PSCCC has several groups involved in work related to IEC-61850 and Centralized Protection & Control (CPC). If you are involved in these new technologies and looking to contribute expertise while learning from other industry experts, the IEEE PES PSCCC is a great place to be. Work is underway to investigate mapping between IEC-61850 and IEEE-1815 (DNP3), to investigate mapping between C37.118.2 and IEC-61850, to develop a beginner’s guide to IEC-61850, to revise IEC-61850-9-3-2016 (PTP profile), to develop a standard for securing GOOSE messages, and to develop a roadmap for new or existing standards to address issues related to CPC systems.
To contact the PSCCC leadership, visit the PSCCC website at:
https://site.ieee.org/pes-pscc/
And as always, 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.
