SOFTWARE defined networks for smart substations in an active distribution system

The Smart Substations (SS) which arc increasingly being employed in the distribution substation of an Active Distribution System (ADS) encompass the characteristics of smart grid. In order to have effective deployment of a Substation Automation System (SAS), one of the major prerequisites is to have a secure, reliable, resilient, standardized and interoperable communication architecture. The newly evolved technology of Software Defined Network (SDN) is increasingly being used in the domain of Smart Grid. In this paper, concept of SDN is applied in the SAS for prioritizing time critical Generic Object Oriented Substation Event (GOOSE) messages in order to reduce their latency in the network. This approach of prioritizing GOOSE messages for its fast delivery improves the reliability and Quality of Service (QoS) of the SAS. In this paper, the developed prioritization approach is demonstrated in a virtual SDN environment. Finally, performance evaluation of proposed GOOSE prioritization algorithm in SDN based SAS is carried out by developing a Virtual Tenant Network (VTN).