1 Scope
This part of IEC 61850, which is a Technical Report, is intended for an audience familiar with network communication
and/or IEC 61850‑based systems and particularly for substation protection and control equipment vendors,
network equipment vendors and system integrators.
This Technical Report focuses on engineering a local area network limited to the requirements
of IEC 61850‑based substation automation. It outlines the advantages and disadvantages of different
approaches to network topology, redundancy, clock synchronization, etc. so that the
network designer can make educated decisions. In addition, this report outlines possible
improvements to both substation automation and networking equipment.
This Technical Report addresses the most critical aspects of IEC 61850, such as protection related to tripping over the network. This Technical Report addresses
in particular the multicast data transfer of large volumes of sampled values (SV)
from merging units (MUs). It also considers the high precision clock synchronization and “seamless”
guaranteed transport of data across the network under failure conditions that is central
to the process bus concept.
This Technical Report is not a tutorial on networking or on IEC 61850. Rather, it references and summarizes standards and publications to assist the engineers.
Many publications discuss the Ethernet technology but do not address the networks
in terms of substation automation. Therefore, many technologies and options have been
ignored, since they were not considered relevant for a future-proof substation automation
network design.