Investigating the performance of QoS enabled LTE networks for IEC 61850 based smart grid applications

With the proportion of de-centralized energy resources (DERs) in power networks on the increase and active consumer participation in energy exchanges becoming common, the automation of power grids needs to become distributed, fast and reliable. Such advanced automation schemes require seamless communication between Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs) within a substation and the IEDs of remote Distributed Generation (DG) units. The IEC 61850 standard provides common data models for IEDs, defines standard communication services for information exchange and places requirements on the communication systems supporting automation of the power grid. This paper investigates the performance of Long Term Evolution (LTE) communications technology with enabled Quality of Service (QoS) features, for wide area measurement acquisition and control, using IEC 61850 standard communication services. This investigation performed real time testing using a test configuration based on the integration of an Ericsson LTE network infrastructure with an IED and a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system. Test results show that QoS enabled LTE satisfies the stringent transfer time requirements for the P4, P5, and P6 classes, defined in the IEC 61850 standard, even under heavy radio network congestion conditions.