Evaluating 5G Communication for IEC 61850 Digital Substations: Historical Context and Latency Challenges

Hafiz Zubyrul Kazme (), Per Westerlund and Math H. J. Bollen
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Hafiz Zubyrul Kazme: Electric Power Engineering Group, Luleå University of Technology, 931 87 Skellefteå, Sweden
Per Westerlund: Electric Power Engineering Group, Luleå University of Technology, 931 87 Skellefteå, Sweden
Math H. J. Bollen: Electric Power Engineering Group, Luleå University of Technology, 931 87 Skellefteå, Sweden

Energies, 2025, vol. 18, issue 16, 1-30

Abstract: Digital substation technology adhering to the IEC 61850 standard has provided several opportunities and flexibility for the rapid growth and complexity of the present and future electrical grid. The communication infrastructure allows complete interoperability between legacy and modern devices. The emergence of 5G wireless communication and its utilization in substation operation presents significant advantages in terms of cost and scalability, while also introducing challenges. This paper identifies research gaps in the literature and offers valuable insights for future analysis by providing a simulation study using an empirical latency dataset of a 5G network to illustrate three aspects of substation operational challenges: coordination of protection schemes, sequential reception of packet data streams, and time synchronization processes. The findings show a mean latency of 8.5 ms for the 5G network, which is significantly higher than that of a wired Ethernet network. The results also indicate that the high latency and jitter compromise the selectivity of protection schemes. The variability in latency disrupts the sequence of arriving data packets such that the packet buffering and processing delay increases from around 1.5 ms to 11.0 ms and the buffer size would need to increase by 6 to 10 times to handle out-of-sequence packets. Additionally, a time synchronization success rate of 14.3% within a 0.1 ms accuracy range found in this study indicates that the IEEE 1588 protocol is severely affected by the latency fluctuations.

Keywords: power system reliability; digital substation; IEC 61850; wireless communication; 5G mobile communication; power system protection; SV packets; GOOSE packets; IEEE 1588 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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