Performance Evaluation of IEC 61850 GOOSE Messages over a 5G Network for Protection Coordination in Smart Grid

With low latency communication, it is possible to improve the reliability and reduce the downtime for the electric grids with coordination of digital protection relays. 5G wireless networks are quickly getting better coverage and becoming a viable alternative for smart grid communication. Moreover, there is a significant enthusiasm within the mobile network industry for energy use cases in this context. In this paper, we evaluate the feasibility of using a commercial 5G-NR access network with 4G core for protection coordination using IEC 61850 GOOSE. This is intended to validate previous studies that have evaluated smart grid communication over experimental 5G networks and to give practical insights on how to approach the configuration of protection coordination considering the limitations of the mobile network.