The purpose of this section of IEC 870-5 is to standardize the transmission of integrated totals representing the amount of electrical energy transferred between power utilities, or between a power utility and independent producers on a high voltage (HV) or medium voltage (MV) network as a part of EMS (energy management systems) functionality. This section is not concerned with the low voltage (LV) networks or the interfaces to the energy consumption meters themselves. In general the values of integrated totals are transmitted at periodic intervals to update the energy interchanged between utilities or between heavy industry and utilities. The periodically received information is used for supervisory and control purposes of energy distribution in wide area networks. The defined data transmission protocol specifies particular means of security against corruption of the transmitted application data from source to destination. Upgraded provisions of data integrity are desirable because interchange accounting may be based on the correct transfer of this information. Standards specified in this section of IEC 870-5 are compatible with standards defined in IEC 870-5-1 to IEC 870-5-5 (see clause 2).