The feasibility of a WLAN based power substation monitoring platform

The industrial WLAN is gaining momentum in various applications in the industry. With reference to the power utility sector, WLAN communication could be used for less critical operations in power substation yards. The traditional wired data collection performed by Industrial Electronic Devices (IEDs) and Remote Terminal Units (RTUs) could be done wirelessly. This paper addresses the feasibility for implementing power substation monitoring applications using Wireless LAN based on IEEE 802.11b and IEEE 802.11g standards. A section of a power substation communication network is simulated in OPNET Simulator to assess the communication performance. Various key aspects and requirements including physical characteristics, transmit power, packet size and segmentation are described and the WLAN communication performance is analyzed with key indices considered, such as the transmission delay of the models with reference to the IEC 61850 timing requirements, the throughput and load of the networks. The analysis of the simulated results demonstrates that WLAN is feasible in power substations monitoring applications.