Considering the technical features and development trend of digital substation and application of fault line selection technology to digital substation， a model of intelligent electronic device（IED） for fault line selection based on IEC 61850 is established. The basic framework of the model includes two parts. The first part is that the fault line selection function is decomposed into logical node defined by IEC 61850. The second part is that the model identifies and classifies the application information and basic function of IED for fault line selection. Meanwhile， two key elements that affect the communication of the model are analyzed， including transmissions from sampled measurements to IED model for fault line selection， and the transmissions from the results of line selection to background management system. Based on this methodology， the communication of IED model for fault line selection in digital substation is implemented.