Operational testing of virtual and physical IEDs using GOOSE for protection application

The integration of Operation Technology such as Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs) brings added challenges for testing and operation of complex interconnected protection systems. The hardware limitations of IEDs, such as integration in existing infrastructure and reduced run time control, limits engineers and researchers to test complex protection and automation scenarios. Virtualization of these technologies, allows seamless integration of software units into existing systems, which can be scaled up for large scale system testing. In this paper, the operation of virtual IEDs has been validated with that of physical IEDs. Two separate test platforms are used; one for the physical IED infrastructure and the other for virtual IED (vIED) infrastructure. A use case for overcurrent feeder protection using GOOSE communication has been demonstrated. The performance of circuit breaker tripping and GOOSE communication has been demonstrated and compared for both the test platforms. The vIED operational ability is validated and key insights for future work are given.