Bob Hampton is a Sr. IEC 61850 Software Developer at Tesco Automation, bringing 47 years of hands-on experience spanning the full evolution of IEC 61850 software development.

Bob’s career began in the foundational era of programming, writing in assembly language, Fortran, and COBOL, and has since grown to encompass a broad portfolio of languages including C, C#, Forth, Java, JavaScript, Lisp, and many others. This depth of experience across decades of technological change gives him a rare perspective on how software architecture and standards have matured together within the power utility space.

Since 2016, Bob has worked with Southern California Edison (SCE) on the modernization of their internal IEC 61850-based Substation Engineering Modelling Tool (SEMT). In this role, he leads the development of the System Configuration Tool, with a primary focus on implementing full support for IEC 61850’s System Configuration Language. His work ensures the tool adheres as closely as possible to IEC 61850 standards while also incorporating support for emerging specifications, including the GCL/HCL standards introduced in IEC 61850-6-2.