Application and prospect of Ethernet in substation automation system communication

Based on the layered and distributed structure of the substation automation system and its communication tasks and requirements,defects of the field bus technology are analyzed,such as too many standards,difficult information interactions,inconvenient communication controller expansions,insufficient opennesses and flexibilities and so on.A substation automation system based on Ethernet is put forward,which has simple network structure,universal devices,fast communication speed and full-duplex transmission.Three application modes of the embedded Ethernet are presented:one Ethernet interface for each device in cell;communication manager with Ethernet interface for IEDs(Intelligent Electronic Devices) connected via RS-232 / 485 or field bus;hybrid mode of both.The solution for real-time and reliable data communication of substation is the application of exchange high-speed Ethernet and the full-duplex mode of nodes.