The inclusion of a wide range of different components such as controllers, sensors, and actuators, has made the management of modern smart grids more complex. The coordination of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) combined with storage systems is another necessity in the future of power generation. Due to this increasing use of smart components in smart grids, interoperability among them is a crucial aspect to address. To achieve optimal performance of all grid components, they are interconnected through a communication network, allowing control in a distributed system and a decentralized manner. IEC61850 is a communication standard that has been already used in substations because of its instant data transfer and the ability to enable data exchange between a variety of smart energy-related digital technologies. 

The goal of this activity is to recreate a given substation using built-in IEC61850 protocols instead of conventional co-simulations and to study the performance of this more realistic architecture.  The application of the communication protocols defined by the IEC61850 standard in Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs) by using a prototype testbed architecture running on a real-time digital device has been examined in this project.