IEEE 1613
North American standard for environmental and testing requirements for communications networking devices installed in electric power substations. The IEEE counterpart to IEC 61850-3, with explicit Class 1 / Class 2 pass criteria for each test.
Also: 1613, IEEE 1613-2009, IEEE Std 1613
IEEE 1613 is the North American standard for environmental and testing requirements for communications networking devices in electric power substations. It is the IEEE counterpart to IEC 61850-3 and most vendors selling into both markets certify against both.
The two standards overlap heavily. The differences worth knowing are mostly in how the pass criteria are framed.
Class 1 vs Class 2
Where 61850-3 specifies test severity and expects the device to survive, IEEE 1613 makes explicit what “survive” means by defining two pass classes per test:
- Class 1 — communication errors are permitted during the disturbance; the device must recover automatically once the disturbance is removed. Acceptable for non-critical telemetry.
- Class 2 — no errors permitted during the disturbance. Required for protection-critical communications.
A vendor data sheet that says “1613 Class 2” is making a stronger claim than “1613 compliant” — it is asserting bit-perfect behaviour through surge, ESD, RF, and EFT events.
Where it shows up in procurement
Because most substation networking hardware has to be sold both sides of the Atlantic, the standard practice is to certify dual:
- “IEC 61850-3 / IEEE 1613” appears on virtually every Ethernet switch, media converter, and gateway sold for substation use.
- Vendors break out which 1613 class is met for which test in the conformance documentation, because Class 2 across the board is materially more expensive than Class 1.
The standard also defines a temperature classification — typically -40 °C to +85 °C for the harshest class — that aligns with 61850-3 expectations.
Why it exists separately
IEC 61850 is a European-led family written first for the protocol. IEEE 1613 was written by the US power-industry community to address the same environment from a North American test-laboratory perspective. The standards converged rather than the IEEE adopting the IEC text wholesale, which is why dual certification is the norm rather than one being a strict subset of the other.
For the architect, 1613 and 61850-3 are equivalent statements: the device will survive the substation environment. The procurement question is which class against which sub-test, not which standard is on the data sheet.