Laboratorial Implementation of Future Intelligent Transmission Network Substation for Smart Grid

Abstract

This paper presents the future intelligent transmission network substation architecture; it identifies the most important design patterns for the purpose of building simplified versions of the communication infrastructure with High-Availability Seamless Redundancy (HSR) and Parallel Redundancy Protocol (PRP) configurations, respectively. The network model used for the laboratory tests is detailed, and details regarding the modelling of current-transformer (CT) saturation are given and discussed. Several intentional communications related to equipment or fibre failures are discussed. The laboratory setup for both HSR and PRP is presented. A real-time digital simulator (RTDS) network model is built and the test processes are presented. Some tests are carried out to test the functionality and interoperability with different fault conditions under the future intelligent transmission network substation architectures’ HSR-only and PRP-only data network configurations. The results are analysed and discussed, and a future intelligent transmission network substation test platform is successfully implemented in the laboratory. The experimental results can provide valuable information for power utilities and manufacturers to optimise substation architecture and their products under different conditions.