Performance comparison of IEC 61850-90-5 and IEEE C37.118.2 based wide area PMU communication networks

Dynamic operation and control of power system is being increasingly done with the help of phasor measurement unit (PMU) based wide area monitoring and control system. The data communication requirements for the PMU based applications are well addressed by IEEE C37.118.2 standard. However, IEC 61850 is now becoming a leading standard for power utility automation needs. A new part of IEC 61850, IEC 61850-90-5, specifying the IEEE C37.118.1 based synchrophasors data transfer according to IEC 61850, will lead to IEC 61850-90-5 based PMU communication networks. A novel IEC 61850-90-5 compliant communication model of PMU is proposed in this paper. We also present a comparative performance analysis of the PMU communication networks supporting the new synchrophasor standard for data transfer, i.e. IEC 61850-90-5, and the existing standard, i.e. IEEE C37.118.2, for end to end (ETE) delay requirements for a modified IEEE 30 bus test system.