Method for configuring an intelligent electronic device and a substation automation system

A substation automation system comprising:

• local system equipment;
• a plurality of intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) associated with the local system equipment, wherein each of the plurality of IEDs comprises firmware for providing a dynamic capability in the IED;
• and
• an IED configuration tool configured to interact with the firmware of each IED to configure the IED based on one of an application output and a physical field input, the application configuration tool having dynamic capability information for configuring the IED to execute a flexible data model including the steps of:
• pre-creating a data structure for the plurality of data objects in a configuration tool environment and in firmware, wherein the data structure includes the one or more common data classes and corresponding short address fields;
• creating a requisite number of data object instances for the plurality of data objects based on the dynamic capability of the IED;
• generating a generic data model using the requisite number of data objects instances;
• assigning a logical node class in the configuration tool environment based on the one of the application output and the physical field input;
• and
• dynamically creating a requisite number of logical node instances corresponding to the logical node class using the plurality of data objects, wherein a logical node comprises the corresponding short address fields for the plurality of data objects corresponding to the logical node class.