Agile cyber defense: Enhancing digital substation resilience with SDN-based smart switching

Area of Science:

• Electrical Engineering
• Computer Science
• Power Systems

Background:

• Digital substations increasingly rely on Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs) for protection, automation, and control.
• Virtualization technology offers potential benefits for enhancing substation systems, but requires robust evaluation methodologies.
• The IEC 61850 standard provides the communication framework for digital substations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose and evaluate a virtual Intelligent Electronic Device (vIED) framework for digital substations.
• To develop and apply a novel testing methodology for vIEDs in a Real Time (RT) simulation environment.
• To assess the communication, scalability, and performance of the vIED framework under various network conditions.

Main Methods:

• Development of a vIED prototype based on IEC 61850 and virtualization technology.
• Implementation of a Real Time (RT) simulation for testing the vIED framework.
• Conception and application of a specific testing method to evaluate communication, scalability, and functionality.
• Analysis of the SDCommNet for vIED frameworks, including network re-scaling and traffic impact.

Main Results:

• The vIED framework successfully met essential system characteristics, including response time and network transfer latency.
• Empirical findings confirmed the framework's performance irrespective of communication configurations.
• The study analyzed the impact of nominal and transient data traffic on system performance.

Conclusions:

• The prototyped vIED framework is a viable solution for enhancing digital substation systems.
• The developed evaluation methodology provides a foundation for future design and testing of virtualised substation systems.
• The findings support the continued development and adoption of virtualization in power grid infrastructure.