The concept of the Smart Grid involves remote control and monitoring of the electrical grid from a central position such as a control centre to improve reliability, resilience, flexibility and efficiency. Electrical grids nationwide can thus be aggregated into a single entity with a central point of control. The advantages are numerous, including the ability to operate and monitor remote substations and the tasks within or between these, meaning fewer personnel are required than before.
RuggedCom’s RuggedSolutions for Smart Grid communications
With the current capability to monitor and control devices via Ethernet networks, operators are provided with a better control platform for the grid, as well as quicker functionality as devices update each other in real-time with variable and status information. However, designing and implementing a Smart Grid, especially as an upgrade to an existing legacy installation, requires careful forethought and planning, as well as specialised software and hardware. (Legacy refers to older serial and point-to-point devices.)
One of the first aspects to consider is interoperability. Due to the fact that communication between many of these devices would be on a point-to-point serial cable, interoperability between different vendor equipment within the same substation was previously never an important requirement. However, upgrading to Smart Grid means that these devices will need to start communicating with other vendors devices, whether it is multiple IEDs/RTUs sending their data to a central scada system, or different vendor’s RTUs/IEDs (intelligent electronic devices) needing to communicate amongst each other for various purposes. This often leads to protocol problems.
In this type of situation one requires a protocol gateway, or ‘universal translating’ device that can allow all RTUs and IEDs to communicate with one another. RuggedCom’s eLAN software is a modular, Linux-based substation server and front-end processor that excels at accessing all types of IED data and relaying it to the clients that require it. Users can select any of the wide range of eLAN applications, including over 40 protocols, which means that eLAN can act as a central translator device. In other words, eLAN can normalise a network’s communications and eliminate the need for purchasing of newer devices that can communicate directly between one another. With eLAN the problem of interoperability is eliminated, allowing much more freedom and requiring less capex for an upgrade to Ethernet and TCP/IP.
Security
The next aspect to consider when using Ethernet is security. Providing remote access to devices is a great help in automation and monitoring of Smart Grids, but one must be sure to protect against access by malicious users. Ethernet does provide many built-in security protocols, however, for a mission-critical network such Smart Grid, advanced security and logging is recommended.
RuggedCom’s Crossbow software is a secure access management solution designed to provide NERC CIP compliant access to IEDs. NERC is the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, and the CIP standard is the Critical Infrastructure Protection, a concept that relates to the preparedness and response to serious incidents involving the critical infrastructure of a region. In other words the CIP standard deals with how the Smart Grid is protected and also how the network and its operators would respond.
Crossbow provides compliance relating to accessing of IEDs from a server in the control room that stores the database of login details. Users are assigned privileges and these define the devices they can interact with and at what level (operator, administrator). Each user is also assigned a password for authentication by the Crossbow server. A feature is the change of passwords on command or to a predetermined time schedule.
Authentication backup
One of the problems with a setup like this occurs if a remote substation loses communication to the central control room, in this case how does one authenticate to Crossbow to gain access to the devices locally? The answer is the Crossbow SAC (station access controller), which can be thought of as a Crossbow client. The new range of modular switches from RuggedCom allow installation of an embedded utility grade PC module used to run the SAC in each remote substation, each SAC would synchronise itself with the Crossbow SAM (secure access manager) running in the control room. In the event that a remote substation’s SAC could not communicate with the SAM, the user could authenticate locally to the SAC database. Upon regaining communications, the databases would resynchronise.
Crossbow provides the traceability essential to facilitating quick resolution in the event of a problem. The addition of optional CAMs (crossbow application modules) allows functionality to be added based on the project requirements. For instance, the config compare and firmware compare modules can be used to compare the configuration and firmware of the IEDs against a known configuration and notify the user when a difference is detected. Crossbow can also prevent users gaining access by using commands such as telnet to access forbidden devices on the network. This is done by disallowing such customised commands.
Conclusion
Using these components of the RuggedSolutions package, operators and administrators can be provided access to all permitted devices on the network remotely and securely. eLAN will work in the background allowing the base communications to take place between different vendor’s protocols on the network, while the logging traceability of Crossbow helps eliminate hours of wasted time spent looking for changes or breaches that have caused system instabilities. In the event that a user needs to be given more or less access, this can be done simply by changing that users access rights, rather than requiring changing passwords on every device on the network. In today’s Smart Grids, interoperability, secure access and traceability are all key aspects that need to be considered. RuggedCom’s Crossbow and eLAN, when used together, provide a common protocol platform for devices from different vendors to communicate while ensuring the highest levels of secure authentication.
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