A custom designed and well monitored substation communication network (SCN) can maintain the fast and reliable information transmission and lead to improved operation and management of a substation automation system (SAS). In order to achieve this goal, a traffic flow model, including a port connection model, a traffic flow source model and a traffic flow service model of a SCN is developed in this paper. Based on the traffic flow model, a traffic flow calculation algorithm is designed to obtain the distribution of traffic load and maximum message delay. In order to verify the accuracy of the proposed method, the SCN of a simplified substation is established in the laboratory. And the distribution of traffic load and maximum message delay calculated using the proposed method is compared to that measured by a network analyzer. Further more, possible applications, such as network device selection, network performance analysis and sensitivity analysis, of the proposed method are demonstrated based on a typical 220 kV substation.Index Terms-substation automation system (SAS), traffic flow analytical model, IEC 61850, traffic load distribution, maximum message delay distribution.