Using Internet Protocols to Implement IEC 60870-5 Telecontrol Functions

Abstract

Abstract-The telecommunication networks of telecontrol systems in electric utilities have undergone an innovation process. This has removed many of their technical restrictions and made it possible to consider carrying out telecontrol tasks with general standard protocols instead of the specific ones that are used currently. These are defined in the standards 60870-5, 60870-6, and 61850 from the International Electrotechnical Commission, among others. This paper is about the implementation, using the services of general standard protocols, of the telecontrol application functions defined by the standard IEC 60870-5-104. The general protocols used to carry out telecontrol tasks are those used in the Internet: the telecommunication network-management protocol SNMPv3 (simple network management protocol version 3), the clock synchronization protocol network time protocol and Secure SHell. With this new implementation, we have achieved, among others, two important aims: 1) to improve performance and, above all, 2) to solve the serious security problems present in the telecontrol protocols currently being used. These problems were presented by IEEE in an article published in the website of the IEEE Standards Association. In this paper, the use of general standard protocols to perform the telecontrol of electrical networks is justified. The development of this paper-its achievements and conclusions and the tools used-is detailed.

The Smart Grid's Data Generating Potentials

“…Compression both in the communication and storage of data has achieved remarkable results [30]. For the protocols to control the grid we have considered one for the high voltage (IEC 60870-5 [10]) and one for medium/low voltage (Modbus) among many others available and in use.…”

“…Considering the high voltage stations, they are already fully monitored; we consider only a decrease in the period of monitoring from 15 to 5 and 1 minute in the three scenarios. The amount of data required is based on the study of Sanchez et al on the implementation of telecontrol functions for electrical stations using IP technologies, by considering just one picture frame per monitoring function [10]. Even here, we keep the current and the near future value constant and increase 100 folds the situation for the far future since we assume more equipment and richer protocols.…”

Automating Electric Substations Using IEC 61850

“…This is especially impor-tant with Ethernet because messages may arrive out of order: readings at time t+30 may arrive before readings from time t. There are many methods of clock synchronization available and one is the network time protocol (NTP) that is standard on most Ethernet TPC/IP based networks. The IEC 60870 family of protocol defines the communication between the substation and control center (Sanchez et al 2010). In Sanchez et al (2010), the authors present an implementation and simulation of an IEC 60870-5-104 protocol using standard Internet protocols, SNMPv3 (simple network management protocol ver.…”

“…The IEC 60870 family of protocol defines the communication between the substation and control center (Sanchez et al 2010). In Sanchez et al (2010), the authors present an implementation and simulation of an IEC 60870-5-104 protocol using standard Internet protocols, SNMPv3 (simple network management protocol ver. 3), SSH (Secure SHell), and network time protocol (NTP), instead of the IEC 60870-5-104 stack.…”

“…3), SSH (Secure SHell), and network time protocol (NTP), instead of the IEC 60870-5-104 stack. They use a database table system, called management information base (MIB) (Stallings 2000), to provide read and write access to the intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) (Sanchez et al 2010). The MIB concept is widely used in networks to manage the devices connected to the network (Stallings 2000).…”