Presented by Steel McCreery and Tim Walker, OMICRON

Ethernet is considered a fast, reliable, and scalable local area network (LAN) technology that has become predominant within electrical utility substations. Unlike information technology (IT) LANs, which are used to move general non-critical information, operational technology (OT) LANs carry information that is used to directly perform critical control functions such as tripping, blocking, and interlocks. To ensure that electrical utility substation OT LANs meet the performance requirements of critical applications, careful consideration must be given to every aspect of design and implementation from topology, media, and switch selection through to the configuration of primary and failover paths. This seminar focuses the IEC 61850 communications services supported within the digital substation and progresses on to key aspects of the design, testing, and commissioning of the digital substation OT LAN and Digital Relay Testing. Cybersecurity is a very important consideration but is beyond the scope of this article. This is a seminar based upon the NETA Article "Digital Substation LAN Design and Testing" submitted by Steel McCreey and contiues on with the testing of Relays in an IEC 61850 Digital Substation.