PD IEC/TR 61850-90-4:2013

Communication networks and systems for power utility automation. Network engineering guidelines | Status: Superseded, Withdrawn

1 Scope This part of IEC 61850, which is a Technical Report, is intended for an audience familiar with network communication and/or IEC 61850‑based systems and particularly for substation protection and control equipment vendors, network equipment vendors and system integrators. This Technical Report focuses on engineering a local area network limited to the requirements of IEC 61850‑based substation automation. It outlines the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches to network topology, redundancy, clock synchronization, etc. so that the network designer can make educated decisions. In addition, this report outlines possible improvements to both substation automation and networking equipment. This Technical Report addresses the most critical aspects of IEC 61850, such as protection related to tripping over the network. This Technical Report addresses in particular the multicast data transfer of large volumes of sampled values (SV) from merging units (MUs). It also considers the high precision clock synchronization and “seamless” guaranteed transport of data across the network under failure conditions that is central to the process bus concept. This Technical Report is not a tutorial on networking or on IEC 61850. Rather, it references and summarizes standards and publications to assist the engineers. Many publications discuss the Ethernet technology but do not address the networks in terms of substation automation. Therefore, many technologies and options have been ignored, since they were not considered relevant for a future-proof substation automation network design. This Technical Report does not address network security. This Technical Report does not address substation-to-substation communication, or substation to control centre communication. Inter-substation communication involves WAN technologies other than Ethernet, but when it uses Ethernet on layer 2, parts of this report can be applied. For inter-substation communication which uses exclusively the routable Internet Protocol, more adapted guidelines are in discussion within IEC TC 57, especially in documents IEC/TR 61850-90-1, IEC 61850‑90‑21, and IEC/TR 61850-90-5, which will be addressed in the WAN engineering guidelines, IEC 61850‑90‑122. This Technical Report does not dispense the responsible system integrator from an analysis of the actual application configuration, which is the base for a dependable system.