Tele-Protection Implementation Using IEEE 1588 Precision Time Protocol in Colombian High Power Substations

摘要

Optical fiber has been used as typical physical transmission medium in Colombian high power substations for effective communication between substations and control centers. However, suita- ble transmissions of tele-protection services continues to be a challenging area in the electrical- supply sector since link stability as well as various performance tests suggest that link recurrence requirements still exhibit limitations when using Metroethernet networks in this context. At pre- sent, improvements have been achieved via proprietary protocols such as Mirrored Bits, which matches the performance of a tele-protection link transmission under normal operation conditions. However, this imposes commercial limitations on the Colombian electrical-supply sector since proprietary protocols hinder fair competition among manufacturers. This is the rationale behind conducting trials with precision time protocol as it is defined in IEEE 1588 standard. The main purpose is to validate whether, under real operation conditions, it is possible to substitute such tele-protection links via Metroethernet networks, yet considering a standard protocol that allows incorporating various pieces of equipment from different manufacturers into the system as well as providing common benefits derived from using this type of communication networks. The present work provides technical results obtained after conducting various simulated tele-trigger tests, including stress tests, where results-stability validation occurs through network-saturation simulations. These saturation conditions are achieved by incorporating additional traffic, which involves several switching events over link paths and permits validating tele-protection-response timing when specifically using IEEE 1588 precision time protocol. Based on the aforementioned reasons as well as on the resulting benefits, a series of laboratory tests have been defined in order to evaluate delay and availability on tele-protection services when transported over IP networks.