Reliable and Secure Control Center to Station Device Communication

Abstract

The increasing demands on the power grid require intelligent and flexible solutions that ensure the grid’s stability. Many of these measures involve sophisticated communication between the control center and the stations that is not efficiently realizable using traditional protocols, e.g., IEC 60870-5-104. To this end, IEC 61850 introduces data models which allow flexible communication. Still, the specification leaves open how DSOs should interconnect their stations to realize resilient communication between the control center and station devices. However, DSOs require such communication to adapt modern solutions increasing the grid’s capacity, e.g., adaptive protection systems. In this paper, we present our envisioned network and communication concept for future DSO’s ICT infrastructures that enables the control center to resiliently and flexibly communicate with station devices. For resilience, we suggest interconnecting each station with two distinct communication paths to the control center, use MPLS-TP and MPTCP for fast failovers when a single link fails, and mTLS to protect the communication possibilities against misuse. Additionally, in accordance with IEC 61850, we envision the control center to communicate with the station devices using MMS by using the station RTU as a proxy.

Type
Publication
Proceedings of the CIRED workshop on Increasing Distribution Network Hosting Capacity 2024, June 19-20, 2024, Vienna, Austria