An IEC 61850 standard-based Edge Computing algorithm to enhance communications in modern power systems

Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) are important components of the smart grid architecture. They play a major role in utilizing renewable energy resources and realizing the benefits of decentralized energy production. The IEC 61850 standard has established comprehensive information models and communication services that have solved interoperability issues in substations and DER systems. Moreover, the standard has simplified the design and engineering processes for integrating new equipment, by standardizing the information model for most DER devices. However, several challenges are associated with communications systems of DERs especially in remote sites. These challenges are stemming from the large data volumes that must be transmitted by DERs systems for monitoring and various other applications. Challenges such as the high cost of bandwidth and network traffic overload, cause severely poor communication performance. This paper presents an implementation of the Edge Computing (EC) concept in communication systems of DERs. The EC concept is driving the Internet of Things (IoT) initiative which is based on bringing central intelligence closer to data sources to reduce decision latency and response times. The proposed solution involves utilizing a Real-Time Automation Controller (RTAC) as an intelligent gateway that performs initial analytics on data of DER sites. The gateway model is based on the IEC 61850 standard along with an embedded algorithm for data fusion. A testbed was developed to investigate the impact of EC on communications performance in terms of bandwidth usage.