DNP Users Group
Ronald Farquharson is an accomplished professional in the field of Smart Grid technology and cybersecurity, serving as the President and COO of the DNP Users Group since 2018 and as a volunteer President since 2013. Ronald operates Mount Victoria Consulting Ltd as the Principal Consultant and President, providing expert consulting services on technology standards, research, and risk mitigation. As a Senior Life Member of the IEEE PES Communications and Cybersecurity Committee, Ronald chairs key working groups focused on IEEE Std. 1815 (DNP3) and IEC 61850. Previous roles include Principal Consultant at EnerNex and Product Segment Manager at GE Grid Solutions. Ronald holds a Diploma in Engineering Technology from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology and has furthered education at the University of Calgary.
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DNP Users Group
The development of DNP3 was a comprehensive effort to achieve open, standards-based interoperability between substation outstations and master stations for the electric utility industry. Since its inception, DNP3 has also become widely utilized in adjacent industries such as water / waste water, transportation and the oil and gas industry. In early 2010, the DNP Technical Committee began working with the IEEE to establish DNP3 as an IEEE standard; IEEE Standard for Electric Power Systems Communications – Distributed Network Protocol (DNP3) was released as IEEE Std 1815TM-2010 later that year. This standard incorporated all of the individual “Basic 8” volumes into one document, with each “Basic 8” volume becoming a separate Clause in the 1815-2010 document. Since then, members of the DNP Technical Committee and IEEE Power & Energy Society, Transmission and Distribution (PE/T&D) Committee and Substations Committee (PE/Sub) – Working Group C12 have been working diligently to update various sections of the DNP3 specifications. The result is IEEE Std 1815TM-2012, which was released Oct. 12, 2012. The updated DNP3 standard contains many changes, including DNP3 Secure Authentication v5, which defines a protocol mechanism that enables a DNP3 outstation/master to unambiguously determine that it is communicating with the correct user/outstation. IEEE Std 1815-2012 and the accompanying DNP3 Specification Supplement 1 - Device Profile Template and XML Schema are now available for download to DNP Users Group members from the DNP3 Document Library.