Future electric power systems must be able to integrate distributed energy resources such as photovoltaic solar panels and wind turbines, but also smart devices and electric vehicles. Accordingly, the level of system disturbances will increase. How to monitor and control of these disturbances in a secure way?
A wire-area monitoring, protection and control (WAMPAC) application anticipates and responds to system disturbances. A typical WAMPAC architecture uses Routed-GOOSE (R-GOOSE) and Routed-Sampled Values (R-SV). These messages are routable between substations. Normal GOOSE or SV messages are encapsulated inside an IP/UDP Multicast tunnel and defined in the technical report IEC/TR 61850-90-5.
Digitally signaturing time-critical messages
Also the security of the R-GOOSE and R-SV messages is defined in IEC/TR 61850-90-5. This security guarantees the authentication and integrity of each message and is realized by a digital signature. These digital signatures use cryptographic algorithms, which are very time consuming. Yet, R-GOOSE and R-SV are time-critical messages: the maximum time between IEDs is 3ms. The goal of this study is to determine if it is possible to use digital signature for each R-GOOSE and R-SV message and which cryptographic algorithms can be used.
Read the white-paper, written by EE-ISAC member Jean-Roland Schuler and his colleague Patrick Favre-Perroz, both working for the University of Applied Science of Fribourg. If you are interested to hear more, please feel free to contact Jean-Roland Schuler.
