Reliable Networking Solution for Power Substations

Electricity serves an important part to the economy and to people’s day-to-day activities. A power grid that fails can cause catastrophic damages.

Recently, ATOP provided a full turnkey industrial networking solution for a project consisting of up to 32 substations, many of which are far from each other. Requirements included, besides compliance with industrial cyber security standards and high reliability, support for:

– Traffic optimization and packet prioritization according to IEEE 802.1p/q

– Precision Time Protocol – time synchronization according to IEEE 1588v2

– HSR-PRP zero packet loss redundancy protocol

Substation data traffic originates mainly from the RTU/VOIP/AMR/Recorder. These devices are connected to ATOP’s EHG2408 unmanaged switch, a plug and-play 8-port switch with fast, reliable network switching while offering increased network security through MACsec encryption.

EHG2408 is then connected to ATOP’s EHG7512, a 12-port managed gigabit Ethernet switch with not only eight RJ-45 but also four 10-Gigabit SFP uplinks ports, to communicate with other distant substations. A standard ERPS single ring topology creates network redundancy, ensuring less than 25ms recovery time in the event of network failover.

To see the full topology and to learn how our BlackBear TechHive family member BlackBear Cyber Security helps us keep the system additionally safe from zero day vulnerabilities, here you can download the full whitepaper, Robust and Secured Networking Solutions for Substations.