Traditionally, industrial facilities have been islands unto themselves, employing communication protocols for plant control systems that met only the needs of a particular plant. In the smart grid era, however, industrial facility systems may need to communicate with the local utility, a service provider or their own renewable resource generation facility. IEEE Standard 1815, also known as the Distributed Network Protocol, or DNP3, facilitates seamless interaction and secure two-way communications between diverse systems and devices.

Sam Sciacca addresses this in his Insights on Power, column published in Consulting-Specifying Engineer Magazine.  Sam states that DNP3 provides the industrial facility sector with all the features and functions it needs to interface with the rest of the world and it is also the most widely used protocol by electric utilities around the world. For more information read the entire article “For Communications Interop, Follow Protocols“.

Sam Sciacca chairs two IEEE working groups dealing with cyber-security for electric utilities: the Substations Working Group C1, which is working on P1686; and the Power System Relay Committee Working Group H13, which is working on PC37.240. Sciacca currently is CEO of SCS Consulting, LLC.