Finding LN's in 61850 SCL

Owned by Sander Jansen
Last updated: Jun 13, 2023
1 min read

In order to work with SCL files, some understanding is needed. Besides the IEC61850 (pdf) documents itself (not free of charge). Here are some hints.


Data object types in the DataTypeTemplates section can be used by multiple IED elements. They heave been designed that way to reduce SCL file sizes. In order to find out by which IED!s a data object is used something like so:

  1. Take the element you want to know the IEDs for DO , SDO , BDAB  or
  2. Get their parent element DOType , DAType and get their id attribute
  3. Look in the DataTypeTemplates for this ID usage. That is the type attribute in elements DO , SDO, DA or BDA
  4. Do step 2
  5. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until the parent is LNodeType
  6. Take the id  and look in the whole file for LN[lnType="..."], LN0[lnType="..."] .
  7. And the look for the IED s those those logical nodes are hosted in

If with data object you are referring to a instantiated data object DOI or SDI or DAI for data attributes you can use closest to find the closest element with a tagName 



Technical information on the workings of 61850 SCL can be found here:

https://github.com/sprinteins/oscd-plugins.src/tree/main/doc/guidelines