Modelling and using IEC 61850-7-2 (ACSI) as an API

IEC 61850, a recently adopted standard for communications in substations, defines a large data model of the substation domain and a set of services that operate on that data. The latter is called ACSI (abstract communication system interface). It is specified in the standard in a text-and-table format. In this paper, we argue in favour of an ACSI API (application programming interface), which would largely facilitate development of software applications that need to support the IEC 61850 standard. We describe our work on the design of such an API and its usage in the development of a simple application.