IEC 61850 GOOSE Communication

What is GOOSE Messaging?

GOOSE (IEC 61850)

The GOOSE (Gener­ic Object Ori­ent­ed Sub­sta­tion Event) pro­to­col is a com­mu­ni­ca­tion mod­el defined by the IEC 61850 stan­dard, which uses fast and reli­able mech­a­nisms to group any for­mat of data (sta­tus, val­ue) into a data set and trans­mit it across com­mu­ni­ca­tion net­works with­in 4 milliseconds.

It is most com­mon­ly used for data exchanges between IEDs (IED – Intel­li­gent Elec­tron­ic Device) in elec­tri­cal sub­sta­tions over Ethernet.

  • Gener­ic Sub­sta­tion Events (GSE) is the par­ent con­trol mod­el of GOOSE defined in IEC 61850 Part 7–2
  • GOOSE pro­vides a ultra-high mes­sag­ing speed and enhanced reli­a­bil­i­ty

It pro­vides these advanced com­mu­ni­ca­tion fea­tures by apply­ing the fol­low­ing mechanisms:

    • GOOSE uses VLAN and pri­or­i­ty tag­ging tech­niques defined in IEEE 802.1Q to divide one phys­i­cal net­work into sev­er­al vir­tu­al net­work and set the desired mes­sage pri­or­i­ty level.
    • GOOSE data is direct­ly embed­ded into Eth­er­net data pack­ets
    • It works through a pub­lish­er-sub­scriber mech­a­nism on mul­ti­cast or broad­cast MAC addresses.
    • Enhanced retrans­mis­sion tech­nol­o­gy — The same GOOSE mes­sage is retrans­mit­ted with grow­ing, vary­ing re-trans­mis­sion inter­vals. When a new event occurs with­in any GOOSE dataset ele­ment, it will stop the exist­ing GOOSE retrans­mis­sion mes­sage. A state num­ber con­tained in the GOOSE pro­to­col iden­ti­fies whether a GOOSE mes­sage is new mes­sage or has been retransmitted.
    • GOOSE mes­sages are based on the require­ments of the IEC 61850 stan­dard, which aims to pro­vide ven­dor-inde­pen­dence. When using tech­nolo­gies and devices with a full sup­port of IEC 61850, this enables tru­ly inter­op­er­a­ble sub­sta­tion net­works with­out ven­dor spe­cif­ic require­ments around equip­ment, con­fig­u­ra­tion tools, cables, pro­to­col mod­i­fi­ca­tions and algorithms.

    Advantages of Using GOOSE

    • Flex­i­bil­i­ty, adapt­abil­i­ty and effi­cien­cy from rely­ing on soft­ware con­fig­u­ra­tion rather than hard­wired sig­nal paths
    • Extreme­ly high mes­sag­ing speeds
    • Increased reli­a­bil­i­ty from inher­ent GOOSE data integri­ty checks
    • Net­work can be freely extend­ed and re-con­fig­ured at low cost

    How it Works

    The gen­er­al con­cept of GOOSE com­mu­ni­ca­tion is that the pub­lish­er peri­od­i­cal­ly sends mes­sages and when an event hap­pens (e.g. trip­ping sig­nal, cir­cuit break­er clos­ing), it sends a burst of mes­sages with new data. 

    GOOSE mes­sages are event- and dataset based. While the type of dataset is not pre-defined by IEC 61850, it should con­tain fair­ly small num­bers of sta­tus val­ues and their qual­i­ty. When a val­ue of any dataset mem­ber changes, it trig­gers a change of “state” and the new infor­ma­tion is instant­ly published. 

    Because the pro­to­col is based on a publisher/subscriber mech­a­nism, there is no con­fir­ma­tion that the sent mes­sage is cor­rect­ly received by the sub­scriber, the mes­sage is retrans­mit­ted to pre­vent the loss of pack­ets and inform new­ly con­nect­ed devices of the cur­rent state. In order to pre­serve band­width, the delays between retrans­mis­sions grow over time from min­inum thresh­hold imme­di­ate­ly after the state change to the max­i­mum time once the steady state con­di­tion is reached.

    The sub­scriber receives all mes­sages from the sys­tem, but only fil­ters and pars­es the mes­sages car­ry­ing the top­ic it has sub­scribed to. 

    What Can You Do with IEC 61850 GOOSE?

    Peer-to-peer GOOSE com­mu­ni­ca­tion can be used over an Eth­er­net-based sub­sta­tion net­work (replac­ing hard-wired block­ing sig­nal paths between switchgears) to enable sophis­ti­cat­ed log­ic schemes for sub­sta­tion pro­tec­tion and automation.

    Some of the most wide­ly known and accept­ed exam­ples are inter­lock­ing bus­bar pro­tec­tion schemes, cir­cuit break­er fail­ure pro­tec­tion, pow­er qual­i­ty con­trols of par­al­lel pow­er trans­form­ers and selec­tive arc fault protection.

    Inter­lock­ing schemes are par­tic­u­lar­ly pop­u­lar as they take advan­tage of the increased speed and secu­ri­ty pro­vid­ed by GOOSE mes­sag­ing, in addi­tion to being a tra­di­tion­al­ly sim­ple and effi­cient method to pro­tect bus­bars in dis­tri­b­u­tion substations.

    What is IEC 61850?

    The IEC 61850 stan­dard was a response to the grow­ing need for high­er and deep­er lev­els of con­trol and automa­tion in elec­tri­cal grids. With steadi­ly increas­ing num­bers of devices, device types and data points, fur­ther accel­er­at­ed by dig­i­ti­za­tion, as well as the inte­gra­tion of new, often geo­graph­i­cal­ly dis­trib­uted and het­erege­nous, gen­er­a­tion sources, it became evi­dent that future demands could not be met with the tech­no­log­i­cal lim­its of ser­i­al pro­to­cols like Modbus. 

    In order to guar­an­tee inter­op­er­abil­i­ty in the face of rapid tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment and prod­uct inno­va­tion in the indus­try, the IEC 61850 stan­dard not only defines var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ca­tion pro­to­cols and inter­faces, but also pro­vides spec­i­fi­ca­tions con­cern­ing the sub­sta­tion mod­el­ling, con­fig­u­ra­tion lan­guage and data mod­els. For this rea­son, IEC 61850 is com­mon­ly referred to as “not just a pro­to­col” and often called a data mod­el or frame­work instead. 

    The scope of the stan­dard allows to map the stan­dard­ized data mod­els and ser­vices onto server­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion pro­to­cols and thus trans­fer the data via Eth­er­net using dif­fer­ent pro­to­cols for dif­fer­ent require­ments and appli­ca­tions, as for exam­ple TCP/IP-based pro­to­cols for clients/server com­mu­ni­ca­tions. For this rea­son, despite its ini­tial focus on sub­sta­tion automa­tion, the flex­i­bil­i­ty of IEC 61850 has spread its use to oth­er appli­ca­tions, such as the inte­gra­tion of dis­trib­uted ener­gy resources (DERs) into the pow­er sys­tem or the com­mu­ni­ca­tion between intel­li­gent devices in Build­ing Man­age­ment Sys­tems (BMS).

    The IEC 61850 stan­dard dis­tin­guish­es itself through the fol­low­ing elements:

    Abstract Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Ser­vice Inter­face (ACSI)
    The ACSI (defined in IEC 61850–7‑2) describes the func­tions and ser­vices for the inter­ac­tion between IEDs in the sys­tem. Exam­ples of IEC 61850 ser­vices include the trans­mis­sion of files, read­ing of data or assig­ni­tion of val­ues. The ACSI can be mapped onto var­i­ous pro­to­cols, includ­ing MMS or web services.

    Sys­tem Design and Struc­ture
    The func­tions of the IEC 61850 stan­dard are the often-heard log­i­cal nodes, which can sim­ply con­tain device descrip­tions but usu­al­ly rep­re­sent a real phys­i­cal device like switch­es, sen­sors or IEDs, and its entire range of functionalies.

    IEC 61850 Pro­to­col Suite
    The IEC 61850 stan­dard defines sev­er­al dif­fer­ent pro­to­cols for dif­fer­ent pur­pos­es in sub­sta­tions and oth­er facilities/ util­i­ties.
    The stan­dard defines the low-lev­el (process bus) client/server based GOOSE/GSSE (Gener­ic Object Ori­ent­ed Sub­sta­tion Events) pro­to­col to trans­mit event data across net­works at very high speeds. This enables to new pos­si­bil­i­ties for advanced sub­sta­tion automa­tion and pro­tec­tion func­tions and schemes.

    It also defines the more com­plex MMS (man­u­fac­tur­ing mes­sage spec­i­fi­ca­tion) pro­to­col for com­mu­ni­ca­tions between servers and clients. It pro­vides a set of func­tions that allows the client to obtain the data mod­el of the serv­er, read or mod­i­fy indi­vid­ual val­ues, or even delete entries as well as to trans­fer files.

    The last two pro­to­cols dis­played on the chart com­prise the Sam­pled Val­ues (SV) pro­to­col for the trans­mis­sion of dig­i­tized instan­ta­neous val­ues of pow­er sys­tem quan­ti­ties, main­ly pri­ma­ry cur­rents and volt­ages and time syn­chro­niza­tion pro­to­cols such as SNTP over UDP/IP. 

    IEC 61850 Protocol Suite

    Interlocking Protection Schemes with GOOSE

    How does interlocking work? 

    When a fault occurs on the bus­bar, the inter­con­nect­ed relays quick­ly coor­di­nate, caus­ing the relays of the incom­ing feed­ers to block the relays of the out­go­ing feed­ers and then trip the CB of the incom­ing feed­er. The same hap­pens vice ver­sa when a fault aris­es on an out­go­ing feed­er and the relays of the incom­ing feed­er are pro­hib­it­ed to act. 

    Maximum Speed with the GOOSE Protocol

    Since GOOSE mes­sages are sent relay-to-relay, through an Eth­er­net LAN and thus there is no addi­tion­al delay from inter­me­di­ary equip­ment such as input fil­ters or aux­il­iary relays. The block­ing sig­nals can be sent faster than in tra­di­tion­al, hard­wired inter­lock­ing schemes. Peer-to-peer com­mu­ni­ca­tion allows to send block­ing sig­nals to all relays at once, mak­ing the total oper­at­ing time inde­pen­dent from net­work size, com­plex­i­ty or topol­o­gy.

    Higher Reliability and Adaptability 

    In addi­tion to the native secu­ri­ty fea­tures of inter­lock­ing schemes, the oper­a­tional reli­a­bil­i­ty can be fur­ther enhanced by the inher­ent super­vi­sion of GOOSE mes­sages. When a block­ing cir­cuit is bro­ken, unnec­es­sary trip­ping is avoid­ed as the block­ing is not being issued. Instead of ren­der­ing the pro­tec­tion inop­er­a­tive in such a case, GOOSE’ inher­ent super­vi­sion gen­er­ates an alert to ini­ti­ate the maintenance/repair process and react as quick­ly as possible. 

    This super­vi­sion func­tion can also be utilised to adapt to appli­ca­tion require­ments. Depend­ing on the object to be pro­tect­ed, one func­tion must often be pri­or­itzed over anoth­er. For instance, it may be nec­es­sary to sac­ri­fice some oper­a­tion speed in order to achieve selec­tiv­i­ty or vice ver­sa. Such adjust­ments can be eas­i­ly made to the con­fig­u­ra­tion of the GOOSE ser­vice in order to obtain the best pro­tec­tion possible.

    Unique Speed with GOOSE Supporting Remote I/Os (RIOs)

    With the ultra-fast pro­cess­ing time (P2/P3) of iRTUe remote I/O exten­sion units you can take full advan­tage of a fast net­work based on IEC 61850 GOOSE. It enables direct and fast com­mu­ni­ca­tion with relays and mas­ter units (e.g. iGW & iRTU fam­i­lies) and the inte­gra­tion of ana­log and dig­i­tal pow­er qual­i­ty mea­sures at ultra-high speeds.

    The (P2/P3) per­for­mance class is the high­est per­for­mance class of the IEC 61850 stan­dard, demand­ing a total trans­mis­sion time below the order of a quar­ter of a cycle. There­fore set­ting the lim­it to 3ms. The folIow­ing graph demon­strates how the trans­mis­sion time is defined in IEC 61850–5:

    The trip is the most impor­tant fast mes­sage in a sub­sta­tion net­work and for this rea­son the speed per­for­mance require­ments are par­tic­u­lar­ly high. How­ev­er, such speeds can also be nec­es­sary (or at least ben­e­fi­cial) for oth­er oper­a­tions includ­ing inter­lock­ing, inter­trips and log­ic dis­crim­i­na­tion between pro­tec­tion functions.

    State-of-the-Art GOOSE Projects

    This speed is already being demon­strat­ed and put to use in the advanced pro­tec­tion sys­tem SPS by our part­ner HCE from Tai­wan. The sys­tem uses the iRTUe as GOOSE to Dig­i­tal Out­put con­vert­er for quick trips in load shed­ding schemes and as an IED I/O expan­sion mod­ule to pro­vide full flex­i­bil­i­ty. The sys­tem also takes advan­tage of the high capac­i­ties of the iGW-VM soft­ware, which acts as cen­tral IEC 61850 hub, col­lect­ing data from all devices with­in the network.

    Using iGrid T&D for such appli­ca­tions pro­vides many advan­tages beyond the pro­to­col itself, such as: 

    • Par­tic­u­lar­ly fast pro­cess­ing time of iRTUe exten­sion units
    • IEC 61850 pro­tec­tion relays by Ital­ian mar­ket leader Thytron­ic (group company)
    • Full IEC 61850 sup­port through­out all net­work devices (pro­tec­tions, I/Os, gate­way servers, mas­ters, SCADA etc.)
    • IEC 61850 GOOSE and MMS communication
    • Many years of in-field expe­ri­ence in a diverse range of applications

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      IEC 61850

      The GOOSE (Gener­ic Object Ori­ent­ed Sub­sta­tion Event) pro­to­col is a com­mu­ni­ca­tion mod­el defined by the IEC 61850 stan­dard, which uses fast and reli­able mech­a­nisms to group any for­mat of data (sta­tus, val­ue) into a data set and trans­mit it through elec­tri­cal net­works with­in a time peri­od of 4 milliseconds.

      It is most com­mon­ly used for data exchanges between IEDs (IED – Intel­li­gent Elec­tron­ic Device) in elec­tri­cal sub­sta­tions over Ethernet.

      IEC 61850 MMS (Man­u­fac­tur­ing Mes­sage Spec­i­fi­ca­tion) is a client/server based pro­to­col for com­mu­ni­ca­tions between IEDs (IED – Intel­li­gent Elec­tron­ic Device) and high­er lev­el enti­ties (such as RTUs and SCADAs) over Eth­er­net that is part of the IEC 61850 stan­dard for com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy in substations.

      It is mapped onto TCP/IP and allows to access the serv­er through its IP address in order to write/read data and exchange files.

      The IEC 61850 stan­dard for sub­sta­tion automa­tion spec­i­fies a stan­dard­ized Substa­tion Con­fig­u­ra­tion Lan­guage (SCL) to trans­fer device descrip­tions and com­mu­ni­ca­tion para­me­ters amongst dif­fer­ent vendors/ manufacturers. 

      SCL files define sev­er­al capa­bil­i­ty sub­sets for the IED to instan­ti­ate its capabilities.

      The IED Capa­bil­i­ty Descrip­tion (ICD) file is a spe­cif­ic type of SCL file, which are the con­fig­u­ra­tion files defined by the IEC 61850 stan­dard for mod­ern sub­sta­tion automation.

      It is usu­al­ly sup­plied by man­u­fac­tur­ers and defines the full capa­bil­i­ty range of an IED.

      Log­i­cal nodes (abstract data objects) are the main ele­ments of the vir­tu­al object-ori­ent­ed IEC 61850 mod­el, which con­sists of stan­dard­ized data and data attributes.

      They can rep­re­sent switch­es in the grid, sen­sors, com­mu­ni­ca­tion inter­faces, or sim­ply con­tain descrip­tions of devices.

      all entries sort­ed aplhabetically

      A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

      A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

      GOOSE Messaging & iGrid

      iGrid T&D has a spe­cial com­mite­ment to inter­op­er­abil­i­ty and IEC 61850 in par­tic­u­lar. For this rea­son, iGrid has devel­oped a spe­cial tool “iCon­fICD” to con­fig­ure IEC 61850 RTUs, SCADAs, I/O Exten­sion units and oth­er devices for IEC 61850 projects. 

      All iGrid devices and soft­ware solu­tions sup­port GOOSE communication.

      iConfICD Tool

      iCon­fICD is a state-of-the-art ICD design tool for the cre­ation of ICD and CID files and the con­fig­u­ra­tion and mod­el­ling of IEC 61850 servers.

      The tool can be used to set up any device sup­port­ing IEC 61850 com­mu­ni­ca­tion. It allows to cre­ate all of the stan­dard­’s Log­i­cal Devices and Log­i­cal Nodes, as well as to select the cor­re­spond­ing Data Objects, while strict­ly fol­low­ing the guide­lines of the IEC 61850 edi­tion 2 stan­dard. With the inte­grat­ed iEd­it tool, expert pro­fes­sion­als can also man­u­al­ly access and mod­i­fy SCL files with­out restrictions.

      iGW-VM – unlimited control

      The freely scal­able iGW-VM sup­ports all archi­tec­tures using Win­dows or Lin­ux, act­ing as a sub­sta­tion gate­way, bay con­troller, RTU or com­mu­ni­ca­tion front-end for SCADA sys­tems. The iGW-VM is thus the per­fect soft­ware choice for projects with a predetermined/preferred hard­ware or a large grid to cov­er (high num­ber of datapoints).

      iRTUe – Remote I/O Extensions 

      iGWs, iRTUs and third par­ty mas­ter units can be freely extend­ed by con­nect­ing one or sev­er­al iRTUe.

      They sup­port IEC 61850 (GOOSE) com­mu­ni­ca­tion and come in many con­fig­u­ra­tions such as 48 DI, 16 relays, 16 AI, 24 DI + 8 relays, 24 DI + 8 AI or 8 relays + 8 AI.

      iRTU – With I/Os for Direct Data Acquisition 

      Com­pact and scal­able bay con­troller which can act as IEC 61850 client or serv­er, fea­tur­ing con­fig­urable I/O boards for direct data acqui­si­tion, high-pre­ci­sion time­stamp­ing and an option­al Eth­er­net switch for addi­tion­al Eth­er­net ports.

      iGW‑S Substation Gateway

      Pow­er­ful and reli­able sub­sta­tion gate­way, able to run either in stand­alone or redun­dant modes, with an embed­ded Eth­er­net switch (4 ports) and IEC 61850 client and serv­er capabilities.

      Smart Grid Solutions and Applications Explained

      Automation with IEC 61850 

      The IEC 61850 stan­dard is enabling new opor­tu­ni­ties for ven­dor inter­op­er­abil­i­ty and advanced sub­sta­tion automa­tion. Find out how you can take advan­tage of IEC 61850 with easy-to-use and adapt­able solu­tions for a sim­ple migra­tion or retrofit.

      HV Substation Automation

      Pow­er­ful sub­sta­tion automa­tion sys­tems often han­dle numer­ous com­mu­ni­ca­tion pro­to­cols and media with­in one net­work, which can result in expen­sive and com­plex projects.  Avoid these prob­lems with inter­op­er­a­ble tech­nol­o­gy and smart con­fig­u­ra­tion tools.

      MV Distribution Grid Automation

      It is often dif­fi­cult to find the exact solu­tion you need in a MV appli­ca­tion, lead­ing to high­er costs than nec­es­sary. With our scal­able and adapt­able solu­tions you will be able to only pay for what you real­ly need, with­out com­prim­is­ing on qual­i­ty or security.

      Hydroelectric Power Station

      Advanced all-in-one solu­tions can tru­ly sim­pli­fy the automa­tion and con­trol of small and large-scale hydro­elec­tric gen­er­a­tion plants. Thanks to an open design and state-of-the-art SCADA tech­nol­o­gy, the sys­tems remain reli­able and up-to-date through­out the plan­t’s entire life cycle.

      Photovoltaic Power Station

      Using an open and scal­able SCADA sys­tem to mon­i­tor and con­trol a PV plant comes with many ben­e­fits on sev­er­al lev­els. Find out how advanced com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy affects PV oper­a­tion, main­te­nance, sys­tem design, invest­ment secu­ri­ty, profits…

      Control Center SCADA

      Advanced func­tions and tools to assist engi­neers and grid oper­a­tors in the automa­tion and con­trol of MV grids often require to invest in big and com­pli­cat­ed soft­ware solu­tions. We have designed a scal­able and user-friend­ly SCADA sys­tem for util­i­ties with noth­ing left to be desired.

      Railway Automation

      Mak­ing your infra­struc­ture intel­li­gent with advanced com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy will improve your ser­vice and reli­a­bil­i­ty by means of automat­ing and con­trol­ing your trac­tion pow­er net­work and train engines with sim­ple and pow­er­ful tools and devices.

      Protocol Conversion

      As com­mu­ni­ca­tion net­works grow in com­plex­i­ty, “plug and play” promis­es become hard­er to keep. Inter­op­er­a­ble pro­to­col con­vert­ers and soft­ware solu­tions with state-of-the-art capa­bil­i­ties and funci­tonal­i­ties can be the bridge to all the func­tions and flex­i­bil­i­ty your net­work needs.

      Generation Dispatch Control Center

      With a gen­er­a­tion dis­patch enter you can auto­mat­i­cal­ly con­trol the gen­er­a­tion of all pow­er plants and make direct bids for ancil­lary ser­vices on one plat­form. Check out the most effi­cient com­mu­ni­ca­tion path between gen­er­a­tion sites, grid oper­a­tors and the pow­er market.

      Smart Metering

      A sin­gle device that col­lects, process­es, trans­fers smart meter data and load curves from sev­er­al meters in dif­fer­ent pro­to­cols via ser­i­al or Eth­er­net, whilst pro­vid­ing advanced automa­tion func­tions? Adapt­able designs and a full com­mu­ni­ca­tion pro­to­col suite make it possible. 

       

      Switchgear & Transformers

      Some­times you have pre­ferred gear for a project or it has already been installed, but it is lack­ing the com­mu­ni­ca­tion capa­bil­i­ties to pro­vide the automa­tion func­tions you are look­ing for. With our soft­ware core iGComms any device can be as smart as you want it to be.