Time Synchronization of Medium Voltage Substation IEDs Using Modbus and Python

Energy demand and supply all over the world is increasing in size and complexity. Anomalous conditions caused by failures in electrical components, human errors and environmental conditions result in electrical faults that can interrupt electricity flow. Substation automation requires precise time synchronization for a variety of Intelligent Electronic Devices for fault diagnosis. The quest for accurate and sequential time stamping of events compels power utility companies to adopt various techniques of time synchronization with an accuracy of a millisecond or a microsecond. Some works adopt the use of time synchronization techniques using protocols such as Network Time Protocol, Precision Time protocol, Simple Network Time Protocol and many more. This work presents time synchronization of IEDs using Modbus protocol and python programming language for a local substation. The system records the output data into a database and displays it on an application software. The time synchronization system was successful alternative for off network systems.