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14.4 IEC 60870-5-103 Master

The IEC 60870-5-103 protocol is a companion standard for the informative interface of protection equipment. Standard IEC 60870-5-103 was prepared by IEC technical committee 57 (Power system control and associated communications). It is a companion standard for the basic standards in series IEC 60870-5:

Standard IEC 60870-5-103 defines communication between protection equipment and devices of a control system (supervisor or RTU) in a substation.

Standard IEC 60870-5-103 defines a multipoint communication protocol via which information can be exchanged between a control system (supervisor or RTU) and one or more protection devices. The control system is the master and the protection devices are the slaves. Each slave is identified by a unique address between 1 and 254. Address 255 is reserved for broadcast frames.

IEC 60870-5-103 Master

Configuring datapoints

WCC Lite supports IEC 60870-5-103 Master protocol over a serial link (according to EIA RS-485). Its full functionality list can be found in an IEC 60870-5-103 PID Interoperability List.

To use IEC 60870-5-103 Master in WCC Lite, it has to be configured via an Excel configuration. This configuration contains two Excel sheets where parameters have to be filled in - Devices and Signals.

IEC 60870-­5-­103 parameters for Devices tab
Parameter

Type

Description

Required

Default value

(when not specified)

Range

Min

Max

name

string

User-friendly name for a device

Yes


description

string

Description of a device

No


device_alias

string

Alphanumeric string to identify a device

Yes


enable boolean

Enabling/disabling of a device

No 1 0 1
protocol string

Protocol to be used

Yes
IEC 60870­-5-103 master
device

string

Communication port

Yes


PORT1

PORT2

baudrate integer

Communication speed, baud/s

No

9600

300, 600, 1200, 2400, 4800, 9600, 19200, 38400, 57600, 115200

databits integer

Data bit count for communication

No

8

8

stopbits integer

Stop bit count for communication

No

1

1

2

parity

string

Communication parity option

No

none

none, even, odd

flowcontrol

string

Number of requests, before link is considered lost (device status signals are changed) and reconnect attempt will be issued

No

none

none


link_address integer Destination address when in transmit and source address when broadcasting Yes
0 65535
asdu_address integer Application Service Data Unit address Yes
 0 65535 
time_sync_interval_sec integer Time frame between Time Synchronization
requests in seconds
No 60

gi_interval_sec integer Time frame between General Interrogation requests in seconds, if 0 requests are disabled No 300



scan_rate_ms integer

Polling interval in milliseconds. Time frame between two telegrams from master

No 100

timeout_ms integer

Response timeout in milliseconds

No

1000



serial_delay integer Communication device’s serial delay in milliseconds. Time frame in which master station is not TX’ing after last RX byte No 50

retry_count integer

Number of retries of failed requests before announcing that device is in Error state

No 3

retry_delay_ms integer Time before the next retry in milliseconds No 500

IEC 60870­-5-­103 master parameters for Signals tab
Parameter

Type

Description

Required

Default value

(when not specified)

Range

Min

Max

signal_name

string

User-friendly signal name

Yes


device_alias

string

Alphanumeric string to identify a device

Yes


signal_alias

string

Unique alphanumeric name of the signal to be Yes used

Yes


source_device_alias

string

device_alias of a source device

For commands


source_signal_alias

string

signal_alias of a source signal

For
commands



enable boolean

Enabling/disabling of an individual signal

No 1 0 1

log

integer

Allow signal to be logged. If log is 0 signal will not be logged. If log is more than 0 signal will be logged

No 0

gi boolean Including/excluding (1 or 0) signal from General Interrogation No 0 0 1
common_address integer Address of a destination device Yes


function integer Function number No 0

info_address integer Information object address Yes


info_number integer Information number Yes


data_type integer ASDU type identificator No 0

fleeting boolean Mark signal as fleeting type (1 or 0). Fleeting signals have go to DPI::OFF after defined time No
0 1
normalise_time_ms integer Time in milliseconds between station receiving DPI::ON and automatically switching to DPI::OFF If fleeting is used  100

IEC 60870-5-103 has an additional signal which can be configured to show communication status. It is used to indicate if the slave device has disconnected from the master (WCC Lite). To configure such a signal, two columns should be filled with particular values. To a newly created additional signal, one should make job_todo equal to device_status and tag_job_todo equal to communication_status.

Debugging an IEC 60870-5-103 Master application

If the configuration for IEC 60870-5-103 devices is set up, the handler for the protocol will start automatically. If a configuration is missing or contains errors, the protocol will not start. It is done intentionally to decrease unnecessary memory usage.

If IEC 60870-5-103 does not work properly (e.g. no communication between devices, data is corrupted, etc.), a user can launch a debug session from the command-line interface and find out why the link is not functioning properly or use WCC Utility to do that.

To launch a debugging session, a user should stop the iec103-master process and run the iec103-master command with respective flags.

  • Step 1: Service must be stopped by entering the following command into the wcclite:
    /etc/init.d/iec103-­master stop
  • Step 2: After service is stopped it must be started with the preferred configuration file (JSON
    files found in /etc/ folder) and a debug level 7:  iec103-­master ­-c /etc/iec103-master/iec103-­master.json -­d7
  • Step 3: Once the problem is diagnosed normal operations can be resumed with the following command: /etc/init.d/iec103-­master start
IEC 60870-­5­-103 command line debugging options
-h [ –help ] Display help information 
-V [ –version ] Show version
-d<debug level> Set debugging level 
-c [ –config ] Config path
-r [ –raw ] Show raw telegram data
-f [ –frame ] Show frame data
-R [ –readyfile ] Ready notification file