What is IEC 61850?

The main components of the IEC 61850 standard was, after 10 years of development, published in 2002 to 2005 by the workgroup IEC TC57 under the title ’Substation Control and Protection Interfaces’.
IEC 61850 is originally developed for protection- and mounting hardware in substations, but since 2009 the standard has been developed to also include DER (Distributed Energy Resources) as for example equipment at Combined Heat and Power plants, photo voltaics, hydropower, wind turbines and many different sensors and components for use in measuring and managing the power system.
The standard IEC 61850 is not just a single standard, but a series of standards which describes all elements of the data communication between a transmitter(client) and a receiver (server).
Many part of EIC61850 is based on other established standards. This applies to for example network cables/fibers, Ethernet and TCI/ICP, while other parts is describes specifically for use in the context of power and energy systems.