Effects of bursty event traffic on synchrophasor delays in IEEE C37.118, IEC61850, and IEC60870

Electric grids are increasingly relying on communication as grids get more stressed due to increasing penetration of renewables, inadequate transmission growth, and other factors. The IEEE detailed power system models have been widely used in power research. But lack of communication topologies or requirements leads to difficulties for results comparison or guidelines for utilities. Further, power grid communication often meet latency requirement by application during the steady state since in such state light traffic are generated. However, identical requirements can be stringent in the bulk power system over hundreds of miles especially when bursty aperiodic event messages are generated during a power disturbance. To address these shortcomings, this paper presents a detailed model of realistic communication for IEEE-14 bus system. Simulation measurement shows significant effects of bursty traffic from GOOSE disturbance event message over Wide Area Network on the delays suffered by other periodic traffic such as synchrophasor data, SCADA polling data, and Sampled Value exchanged between substations. The results also reveals significant scalability issues of centralized control center architecture.