Wind Power Plants

Scope / Goals

The working group develops an OPC UA Information Model by mapping the IEC61850/IEC61400-25 information model to support data exchange use cases for the monitoring and control of wind power plants.

Significant work on establishing standards in the wind power plant domain has already been done within IEC 61400-25. IEC 61400-25 is an extension of the IEC61850. It adds the semantics (Logical Nodes classes) that are specific for the wind power plant domain.

There is an OPC UA companion specification for an IEC61850 mapping (OPC 10040 IEC 61850 – Electrical Substation Automation) and there is a draft for an IEC61400-25 mapping that has been developed by the IEC61400-25 user group (USE61400-25). This working group will evaluate and harmonize the aforementioned mappings and adapt/extend them if this is required for the purpose of producing a usable information model to support operations of various energy resources using OPC UA.

Technical information

A wind power plant is not only wind turbines and wind power plant control. It also requires other components like a substation. And an increasing number of wind power plants also include additional systems like battery energy storage systems (BESS) or PV systems. Information models for these additional components and systems are defined by domain specific IEC 61850 standards.
The companion specification provides a mapping of the IEC 61400-25 information model to an equivalent OPC UA data model. This includes a mapping of the IEC 61850 basic information structure and basic information model as well as a mapping of the domain specific IEC 61850 information models. This allows a consistent modelling for all components of the wind power plant.

The work on the companion specification was driven by the requirement for a gateway solution; so this is the main use case for the mapping. However, the mapping can also be used to model the communication between the components. The following figure shows an example for an OPC UA gateway to a wind power plant.

The mapping that is defined in this companion specification is intended to replace the existing OPC XML-DA mapping in IEC 61400-25-4.

This work is based on the companion specification OPC 10040 (IEC 61850 – Electrical Substation Automation – release candidate) and the IEC 61400-25 mapping draft that has already been developed by the IEC 61400-25 user group (USE61400-25).