Evaluation of applicability to WAMPAC (Wide Area Monitoring Protection and Control) of IEEE 1588

Abstract

We examined the applicability to telecommunication networks for electric power systems applying IEEE1588 (PTP: Precision Time Protocol) as a time synchronization technology. A Peer-to-Peer method and a TC (Transparent Clock) /BC (Boundary Clock) method are suitable for WAMPAC (Wide Area Monitoring, Protection and Control) systems. These methods are equipped with a feature to correct the residence time in each L2 switch. According to the experimental evaluation, when we connected 50 nodes in series, the synchronization precision was estimated at about 511 ns in the Peer-to-Peer method and about 805 ns in the TC/BC method. We examined the synchronization precision using L2 switches without the PTP function. Here, when we connected 50 nodes in series, the synchronization precision was estimated at about 2580 ns. However, a high performance PTP master capable processing many slaves and a PTP slave with a sophisticated ability to process delay variation are required. Consequently, the Peer-to-Peer method or the TC/BC method is available for telecommunication networks for electric power systems, as is the use of the existing L2 switch. If we use L2 switches without the PTP function, the PTP master requires high performance and a high delay variation tolerance is required of a PTP slave.