Feasibility Study Upon The Application Of IEEE 1588 Precision Time Synchronization Protocol (PTP) In Electric Power System

The expansion scale of power system and development of control technologies in power system put forward new requirements on time base in power dispatching system as well as power plants and substations. In fact, due to huge information exchange inside power system and rapid state change, only to meet certain precision degree of clock synchronization can we make sure different functions work well in power system, such as the phase comparison, failure track recording, start sequence of different events and so on. Therefore, in order to further improve power system operation management level and to meet the rapid development requirements of power system as well as to improve the system's ability to control and failure analysis capabilities, we must first provide a unified system clock in order to synchronize the clocks distributed in all sites of the internal control system. The occurrence of IEEE 1588 precision time synchronization protocol in 2002 and its high accuracy and low cost provide a practical and feasible way to meet high precision time synchronization applications in certain fields. This paper firstly outlines the basic concepts of time synchronization and development of time synchronization technology, then analyzes and researches the PTP clock synchronization communication mechanism, best master clock algorithm, as well as the PTP messaging and internal events in a comprehensive systematic way. On this basis, taking the PTP time synchronization itself characteristics, such as high precision, simple operation and low cost as well as the current time synchronization technology in the power system applications and the limitations of existing problems into consideration, we analyze and point out that the adoption of IEEE 1588 time synchronization standard as the power system time synchronization scheme can not only greatly improve the time synchronization precision between various electrical equipment within the power system, ensure the accuracy of line fault locating and power parameters checking, improve the fault analysis ability of power grid and stability control level, but also reduce the establishment cost of time synchronization system, as well as make the replacement and upgrading of system time base become relatively simple and easy.