On the relevance of TSN for Substation Communication Networks

Smart grid substation automation and protection applications are time-critical, since any real time constraint violation may result in disastrous consequences. However, meeting real time requirements in Substation Communication Networks (SCN) is a challenging issue. To address the various real time requirements, the IEC 61850 standard specifies several application protocols that were based on Ethernet but is recently moving to TSN (Time Sensitive Networking). This raises the following question: is TSN always relevant for SCN? This paper attempts to answer this question through a comparison of traditional switched Ethernet and the Time Aware Shaper (TAS) mechanism associated with the TSN standard. We highlight the difficulty in answering the question simulating scenarios in which TAS is relevant and others in which it is not. We conclude by making some recommendations for using the TAS of TSN in SCN.