Evaluating of DNP3 protocol over serial eastern operating unit substations and improving SCADA performance

Abstract

Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) is a critical part of monitoring and controlling of the electrical substation. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the performance of the Distributed Network Protocol Version 3.3 (DNP3) protocol and to compare its performance to that of International Electro-technical Commission (IEC) 61850 protocol in an electrical substation communication network environment. Building an electrical substation control room and installing the network equipment was going to be expensive and take a lot of time. The better option was to build a model of the electrical substation communication network and run simulations. Riverbend modeller academic edition known as Optimized Network Engineering Tool (OPNET) was chosen as a software package to model substation communication network, DNP3 protocol and IEC 61850 Protocol stack. Modelling the IEC 61850 protocol stack on OPNET involved building the used Open System Interconnection (OSI) layers of the IEC 61850 protocol stack onto the application definitions of OPNET. The Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) configuration settings of DNP3 protocol were also modelled on the OPNET application definitions. The aim is to compare the two protocols and determine which protocol is the best performing one in terms of throughput, data delay and latency. The substation communication model consists of 10 ethernet nodes which simulate protection Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs), 13 ethernet switches, a server which simulates the substation Remote Terminal Unit (RTU) and the DNP3 Protocol over TCP/IP simulated on the model. DNP3 is a protocol that can be used in a power utility computer network to provide communication service for the grid components. DNP3 protocol is currently used at Eskom as the communication protocol because it is widely used by equipment vendors in the energy sector. DNP3 protocol will be modelled before being compared to the new recent robust protocol IEC 61850 in the same model and determine which protocol is the best for Eskom on the network of the power grid. The network load and packet delay parameters were sampled when 10%, 50%, 90% and 100% of devices are online. The IEC 61850 protocol model has three scenarios and they are normal operation of a Substation, maintenance in a Substation and Buszone operation at a Substation. In these scenarios packet end to end delay of Generic Object Oriented Substation Event (GOOSE), vi © University of South Africa 2020 Generic Substation Status Event (GSSE), Sampled Values (SV) and Manufacturing Messaging Specification (MMS) messages are monitored. The throughput from the IED under maintenance and the throughput at the Substation RTU end is monitored in the model. Analysis of the results of the DNP3 protocol simulation showed that with an increase in number of nodes there was an increase in packet delay as well as the network load. The load on the network should be taken into consideration when designing a substation communication network that requires a quick response such as a smart gird. GOOSE, GSSE, SV results on the IEC 61850 model met all the requirements of the IEC 61850 standard and the MMS did not meet all the requirements of the IEC standard. The design of the substation communication network using IEC 61850 will assist when trying to predict the behavior of the network with regards to this specific protocol during maintenance and when there are faults in the communication network or IED’s. After the simulation of the DNP3 protocol and the IEC 61850 the throughput of DNP3 protocol was determined to be in the range (20 – 450) kbps and the throughput of IEC61850 protocol was determined to be in the range (1.6 – 16) Mbps.