Modelling Communication Network for Intelligent Applications in Microgrids - Part II

The necessity for an efficient electrical network to reach the users demands and take advantage of renewable energy sources has prompted some costumers to install small-scale microgrids, formed by wind turbines and photovoltaic panels to meet their own energy needs. This research presents an evaluation of communication system in small-scale microgrids based on IEC 61850 standard protocol. For this, three technologies were compared: Ethernet, WiFi and ZigBee, according to the implementation costs, reliability and end to end delay. To evaluate the communications architecture, Riverbed Modeler software was used and three different types of data were configured, such as periodic data stream, random data stream and burst data stream, according to the control on intelligent applications. This study allowed to reveal the behaviour of each technology against different types of data streams, as well as the performance of the best technology in terms of CPU utilization, package size handling and application layer protocols.