by Keith Gray, POWER Engineers – a member of WSP, USA
I am honestly humbled to be in this position, surrounded by so many incredibly smart and motivated people. I have a lot to learn, and I am grateful I have Christoph as my teacher.
Hello everyone, my name is Keith Gray and as of March of 2025, I am now a co-convener of IEC TC57 WG10 alongside long-time convener Christoph Brunner. I am excited to participate in WG10 in this position and help everyone continue the great work they are already doing. Since this is my first column as co-convener, I thought I would use it to introduce myself.
I started my career in 2005 working as a substation SCADA engineer for POWER Engineers (now a member of WSP.) I worked on substation SCADA systems for distribution utilities, wind farms, and oil refineries. The oil refinery work continued to grow, and I had the opportunity to do a little bit of protection work as well. I was given the opportunity to attend IEC 61850 around 2009 as we started to learn about digital substations. We also started our “IEC 61850 lab” at this time. This lab was established for us to learn about IEC 61850 and products available on the market. We also used it to develop some internal design guidelines and perform training for our teams. We established relationships with vendors who were very generous in donating equipment and software for our lab use. The lab proved to be an indispensable sandbox, crucial for learning about IEC 61850 features and limitations, and prepared us for future projects.
While working on one of our oil refinery projects, we had a project to design and commission a load-preservation system.
We considered more traditional architectures using hardwires and proprietary high-speed communications protocols. Luckily, I had been involved in the IEC 61850 lab and knew that GOOSE messaging could be used for our application. Over the next year, we deployed the load preservation system using IEC 61850 GOOSE messaging and have since seen it operate successfully multiple times. The load preservation system spanned five substations, including the utility interconnect substation and two on-site generators.
The entire team learned a lot about GOOSE messaging and came to appreciate how flexible it was. On multiple occasions during the project, the scope changed requiring us to make design modifications. GOOSE messaging made this much easier than if we had used traditional hard wires. This was my first exposure to IEC 61850 but since then, we continued to expand our knowledge and experience with more aspects of IEC 61850. In later projects, we deployed MMS and SV in other industrial facilities as well as distribution and transmission substations.
In February of 2020, I attended my first IEC TC57 WG10 meeting in Golden Colorado. This was the last in-person meeting before the pandemic. Over the next couple of years, I attended the meetings virtually and got more involved with a couple of the task forces. IEC 61850-80-5 was the first task force I contributed to, and Edition 2 of that document is due to be released at any time. I also became the publisher of IEC 61850-7-500 and eventually added IEC 61850-7-5.
In 2021, we began participating in the UCA International Users Group Interoperability Testing (IOP) event. The 2021 IOP was virtual because participants still had travel restrictions at the time. Our main role was to perform the system engineering using multiple System Configuration Tools. That IOP focused on Substation Configuration Language (SCL) interoperability and was used to prepare the system configurations for the in-person IOP in 2022. We continued in our role for that 2022 IOP in Milan, Italy, and then again for the 2024 event in Birmingham, AL. We have now started preparing for the 2026 IOP.
I first thought about putting my name in the hat for the co-convener role during the February 2024 meeting. I came back to my company with the idea and quickly received the authorization I needed to become a nominee, which I am very grateful for. In March of 2025, the national committees voted, and I was elected as co-convener.
I have a lot to learn, and I am grateful I have Christoph as my teacher. He has led this group successfully as illustrated by the recent 30 years of IEC 61850 celebration we had in September of this year. The amount of work this group produces is awe-inspiring, and I am looking forward to supporting that work in any way I can. I am honestly humbled to be in this position, surrounded by so many incredibly smart and motivated people.
Biography:
Keith Gray (P.E.) received his M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in 2005. He is a protection, automation, and control engineer with over two decades of experience working for POWER Engineers, a member of WSP. He has focused on digital substations and IEC 61850 since 2014 and is the co-convener of IEC TC57 WG10. He is currently participating in multiple CIGRÉ working groups covering various IEC 61850 topics and he is active in the UCA International Users Group IEC 61850 interoperability events. He is a licensed Professional Engineer in the state of Idaho.
