To deal with the issue of IEC 61850 based configuration method for the distribution automation system (DAS)

this paper analyzes the characteristics of DAS in terms of system structure

control application and engineering scenario which make the configuration process different from the substation automation system (SAS). The configuration requirements for DAS are presented based on the analysis

including the feeder-oriented granularity

topology information content as well as integration modes for subareas and feeder equipment. Then the neighborhood topology information related to an intelligent electronic device (IED) with both primary connectivity and instantiated communication interfaces concerned is extracted to support the application of distributed control in DAS and as a resultant expression for the configuration content. According to the system configuration descriptive language (SCL) scheme in IEC 61850

the redefined configuration files are produced including modified structure and additional content

consisting of feeder configuration description

neighborhood feeder configuration description

feeder configuration exchange description and IED configuration description

etc. For the typical engineering scenarios of “a group of IEDs”

a reference model of information flow in the first configuration and configuration updating process is put forward. Finally

the configuration mode for DAS featuring from whole to partial

from partial to whole and plug and play is concluded and analyzed with a practical example. This work is supported by National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (863 Program) (No. 2012AA050213).