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IEEE - Transfer time measurement for protection relay applications with the IEC
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Conference Paper  in  Electrical Insulation, 1988., Conference Record of the 1988 IEEE International Symposium on · July 2010
DOI: 10.1109/ELINSL.2010.5549563 · Source: IEEE Xplore

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 Transfer time measurement for protection relay
applications with the IEC 61850 standard

Andrea Bonetti Romain Douib

STRI AB Megger Sweden AB
Västerås, Sweden Täby, Sweden
andrea.bonetti@stri.se romain.douib@megger.com

Abstract— This paper describes a practical method to verify the loop-back time for an application that may not bring to a real
GOOSE performances of IEC 61850 protection relays. With advantage for relay protection applications.
reference to a breaker failure protection situation, one protection
IED sends a direct intertrip command to another protection IED. This paper proposes a different test method, which has the
The tests performed measure and compare the total operate time purpose to be more related to relay protection applications.
of the direct intertrip relay application implemented with
GOOSE technology and with conventional technology. II. GOOSE TRANSFER TIME
Measurements of the partial times in the system chain suggest an
additional test method - compared to the so called ping pong time Part 5 of the IEC 61850 standard [1] contains transfer time
(or loop back time) - that could give IEC 61850 GOOSE performance requirements for GOOSE messages, listed
information that more related to relay protection applications. according to their performance classes P1, P2 and P3 (see table
I).
Keywords - Performance Recommendations for IEC 61850
Applications; Methods to Evaluate Transfer time; Comparison of
GOOSE technology with conventional technology; GOOSE
Performance test

I. INTRODUCTION
The international standard for power utility automation,
IEC 61850, has quickly been established in the substation
engineering for several applications like vertical
communication (reporting) to Station HMI and horizontal
communication (GOOSE) among Intelligent Electronic
TABLE I: Performance requirements for different signal types according to
Devices (IEDs) in different bays to achieve interlocking logics. IEC 61850-5. Partial table
Several substations have been commissioned where the
horizontal communication (GOOSE) is used to perform relay Part 5 of the IEC 61850 standard contains also a definition
protection tasks like bay intertripping (breaker failure), of the GOOSE transfer time, described in figure 1:
upstream overcurrent blocking etc. In principle it has to be
recognized that relay applications with the IEC 61850 standard
(GOOSE messages) is not considered as default choice.
One of the points of discussion in the use of GOOSE
messages for relay protection applications is the evaluation of
the speed performances that can be achieved with the GOOSE
technology.
The description of the GOOSE transfer time in the IEC
61850 standard does not allow the relay protection engineer to
verify the timing by himself.
Figure 1: GOOSE transfer time.
Recently a new test proposal has been circulating in the
technical community, known as loop back transfer time, or It is normally not possible for end users to measure the transfer
GOOSE acknowledge transfer time, or ping pong test [3]. This time as defined in the standard as it would require access to
proposal describes a test method that can be performed by any internal signals (A and B) for the protection IEDs that normally
user, but the test require the IED to perform a task for which it cannot be accessed.
is not basically designed and there is the risk to guide the
protection IED manufacturers towards an optimization of their
 III. GOOSE LOOP BACK TRANSFER TIME
Recently the proposal of measuring the loop back time of
one IED has been circulated within the technical community.
This test can be performed by any user and should give an
indication of the time requested by the protection IED to
receive process and send one GOOSE message (see figure. 2):
which is the case when one protection relay detects a breaker
failure situation and issues a trip command to the adjacent
relays to open the adjacent circuit breakers.
The tests have been performed with two protection IEDs
from different manufacturers and a relay test set with built-in
IEC 61850 GOOSE interface.
The first test aimed to verify the final trip transfer time
achieved with the IEDs when the conventional technology was
used, and represented in figure 3.

Figure 2: Loop back transfer time test. The loop back time is the difference
between t1 and t0 and includes the application time (loop-back arrow).

The test, known also as ping-pong test, or GOOSE

acknowledge test, is simple in its idea: the IED is programmed
to receive one GOOSE message (A) published by another IED.
The same IED is then instructed to publish another GOOSE
message (acknowledge GOOSE, B) on reception of the first
GOOSE message.
The time difference between the Acknowledge GOOSE (B)
and the Original GOOSE (A), t1-t0, is the time that should
indicate how fast is the IED in receiving and sending GOOSE
messages. The shortest this time is, the better it is.
It has to be noticed that the measured time with this method
contains the so called “internal IED application time”, which is Figure 3: Direct intertrip transfer time (t1 – t0) implemented with conventional
technology.
schematically represented by the “loop back arrow” in the
tested device in figure 2. The zero time reference is the start of the fault simulation
(fault injection) by the relay test set. The fault is injected in the
The risk with this method is that it could be “unfair” for
first IED, which issues the trip command to its binary output
some protection relays, as they are generally not designed to
(instantaneous overcurrent protection). The trip signal is wired
receive a protection message and send acknowledge to it. They
to a binary input of the second protection IED (B) and this IED
might not have the flexibility to handle this application with
is configured to trip its own binary output on reception of this
efficiency with the result that the test could penalize a
signal. The relay test set is stopped by the reception of the
particular protection relay. On the other side, relay
binary output of the second IED and the intermediate time tac
manufacturers may decide to invest efforts in reducing this
(relay trip contact from the first IED) has also been measured
particular application time (loop back application time), in
in order to verify the different performances of the different
order to be able to show better GOOSE performance transfer
IEDs.
time data, but this application does not meet any realistic
situation in the relay protection. Without changing any setting in the IEDs, the physical
connection between the inputs and outputs is removed and the
IV. THE EXECUTED TESTS IEDs are then connected to the substation bus so that they can
communicate to each others with the implemented GOOSE
The tests that have been executed aim to give to the relay messages. By simulating the same fault condition, the IED A
engineer a transfer time data linked as much as possible to a sends a trip order GOOSE message when the same protection
relay protection application. With these tests it is also possible function operates; the IED B receives the GOOSE message and
a comparison of the GOOSE technology with the today’s operates its trip function, which at the end operates its final
technology, which is the transfer of relay information (trip, binary output contact.
start, blocking signals etc.) among different relays by means of
binary outputs connected to binary inputs. The schematic representation of this implementation is
represented in figure 4.
The executed tests consider the fact that today, in one IEC
61850 substation, the circuit breaker is tripped by means of a
relay binary output; the protection application the tests are
referring to is a direct intertrip between two protection relays,
 B. A trips B – GOOSE Technology
Also these tests have been repeated 20 times and average
times have been used for the evaluation. The same fault
injection has been generated from the relay test set.
In order to measure all the partial times in one single test,
the relay test set has been configured to start three different
timers at the fault injection. The first timer (tac) was stopped by
activation of binary input 1 of the test set (connected to Relay
A trip contact. The second timer (tag) was stopped by reception
of the trip GOOSE message from IED A, and the third timer
was stopped by activation of binary input 3 of the test set,
which was connected to the trip contact of Relay B.
Figure 6 shows the test system set-up, where it can be seen
that binary input nr. 2 of the test set is not connected because it
has been “mapped” ([4] and [5) to the trip GOOSE message
Figure 4: Direct intertrip transfer time (t1 – t0) implemented with GOOSE. sent by IED A:
The time difference between the activation of the trip
contact from IED B (t1) and the fault injection (t0) is measured.
Partial times (tag and tac) have also been measured to be able
to better investigate in the performances of the individual IEDs.
The difference between the intertrip time achieved with
conventional technology and the intertrip time achieved with
GOOSE communication gives an indication of the
performances that can be achieved with GOOSE technology in
comparison with the conventional one.
The same tests are repeated with the positions of the IEDs
changed. The IED A will be the receiver IED and the IED B
will be the sender IED. The following paragraphs report the
test results.

V. TEST RESULTS IED A TRIPS IED B

A. A trips B – Conventional Technology
Figure 5 shows the test results for the intertrip scheme
obtained with the conventional technology. The tests have been
repeated 20 times and average times have been used for the
evaluation. The total intertrip average time was 35.74 ms with a
standard deviation of 2.23 ms.
Figure 6: Connection of the test set to the tested system and mapping of BI2 to
a trip GOOSE message of IED A.
Figure 7 shows the test results for the intertrip scheme
obtained with the GOOSE technology. The total intertrip
average time was 32.74 ms with a standard deviation of 2,16
ms.

Figure 7: Direct intertrip transfer time (t1 – t0 = 32.74 ms) implemented with
Figure 5: Direct intertrip transfer time (t1 – t0 = 35.74 ms) implemented with
GOOSE technology.
conventional technology.
C. Comparison between Conventional Technology and repeated 20 times and average times have been used for the
GOOSE Technology. evaluation.
The total intertrip time measured with the The total intertrip average time is 34.93 ms with a standard
conventional technology was 35.74 ms compared to the deviation of 0.88 ms.
result obtained with GOOSE technology, which was 32.74
ms. This means that GOOSE technology is typically 3 ms
faster than the conventional technology.
Figure 8 shows the total intertrip times measured with both
technologies, where the average difference of 3 ms can be
noticed.

Figure 9: Direct intertrip transfer time (t1 – t0 = 34.93 ms) implemented with
conventional technology.

B. B trips A – GOOSE Technology

Figure 10 shows the test results for the intertrip scheme
obtained with the GOOSE technology.
The tests have been repeated 20 times and average times have
been used for the evaluation.
The total intertrip average time is 30.19 ms with a standard
deviation of 1.29 ms.
Figure 8: Direct intertrip transfer time (A trips B) implemented with
Conventional and GOOSE technology.

D. Comparison between IED A and IED B performances.

A closer analysis of the partial measurements brings to the
following conclusions:
IED A is typically 1 ms ( 23.44 ms – 22.65 ms = 0.79 ms)
faster in publishing a trip GOOSE message than closing its trip
contact (binary output). Figure 10: Direct intertrip transfer time (t1 – t0 = 30.19 ms) implemented with
IED B needs typically 13 ms (35.74 ms – 23.24 ms = 12.5 GOOSE technology.
ms) to pick-up a trip order from its binary input and send it to
its trip binary output (de-bouncing filter of the binary input C. Comparison between Conventional Technology and
card is involved in this process). GOOSE Technology.
IED B needs typically 10 ms (32.74 ms – 22.65 ms = 10.09 The total intertrip time measured with the conventional
ms) to receive a trip order GOOSE message and forward it to technology was 34.93 ms compared to the result obtained
its trip binary output. It should be noticed that GOOSE with GOOSE technology, which was 30.19 ms. This means
messages derived from protection functions “do not bounce”. that in this case the GOOSE technology is typically 5 ms
faster than the conventional technology. Figure 11 shows
The GOOSE technology is faster in this case mainly the total intertrip times measured with both technologies,
because IED B is faster in receiving the GOOSE message than where the average difference of 5 ms can be clearly
reacting on activation of the binary input. identified.
For the GOOSE technology the following considerations
may be done:
IED A would trip the B-breaker with its binary output after
23.44 ms. IED B trips its breaker (B-breaker) after 32.74 ms.
This means that IED B “delays the trip order” by 32.74 – 23.44
= 9.3 ms

VI. TEST RESULTS IED A TRIPS IED B

The roles of the IEDs have been inverted and the same tests
have been carried, with the following results:
Figure 11: Direct intertrip transfer time (B trips A) implemented with
A. B trips A – Conventional Technology Conventional and GOOSE technology.
Figure 9 shows the test results for the intertrip scheme
obtained with the conventional technology. The tests have been
D. Comparison between IED B and IED A performances.
A closer analysis of the partial measurements brings to the
following conclusions:
IED B is typically 4 ms ( 26.93 ms – 23.11 ms = 3.82 ms)
faster in publishing a trip GOOSE message than closing its trip
contact (binary output).
IED A needs typically 8 ms (34.93 ms – 26.99 ms = 7.94
ms) to pick-up a trip order from its binary input and send it to
its trip binary output (de-bouncing filter of the binary input
card is involved in this process).
IED A needs typically 7 ms (30.19 ms – 23.11 ms = 7.08
ms) to receive a trip order GOOSE message and forward it to
its trip binary output. It should be noticed that GOOSE
messages derived from protection functions “do not bounce”.
The GOOSE technology is faster in this case because IED
B is 4 ms faster in sending the GOOSE message than closing
its trip contact and IED A is faster in receiving the GOOSE
message than the binary input (1 ms).
For the GOOSE technology the following considerations
may be done:
IED B would trip the A-breaker with its binary output after
26.93 ms. IED A trips its breaker (A-breaker) after 30.19 ms.
This means that IED A “delays the trip order” by 30.19 – 26.93
= 3.3 ms only.
VII. THE PROPOSED TEST METHOD.
The performed tests have showed that, at least for the IEDs
used and already with the today’s available technology, the
GOOSE technology is faster than the conventional technology.
They have also shown that the internal IED application time
has an impact on the total intertrip scheme performance, and it
cannot be neglected. It is important then to provide
performance data that contain internal IED application time
related to a realistic protection application.
One first test to give significant information on the relay
performances in using GOOSE messages for protection
purposes should be concentrated on GOOSE send
(subscription) from trip function logical node (PTRC) triggered
by a relay protection functions. For each protection function the
typical operate time should be reported based on measurements
from relay binary output (contact and/or solid state) and
GOOSE message as well, as shown in Figure 12:
Figure 12: Typical operate time for a protection measured from the trip
contact and from a published GOOSE message.
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The second test should be concentrated on GOOSE receive,
based on a fixed application (direct intertrip through trip
function), where the following times are given (Fig. 13):
Figure 13: Reporting of the typical transfer time from binary input to
binary output (conventional technology) and from GOOSE subscription to
binary output (GOOSE technology).
If a “pure IEC 61850 test” should be carried (not involving
measurements on binary outputs), it would be possible to
measure the time difference between the GOOSE that the IED
should receive and the GOOSE that the IED will publish
through its PTRC logical node, “triggered” by the received
GOOSE message, as shown in figure 14:
Figure 14: Alternative method to ping-pong. Still a time difference
between 2 GOOSE messages is given, but the internal IED application time has
a reference to a protection application.
Even if this final test looks very similar to the loop back
test, in reality it is not because it involves a certain internal IED
application time from the tested IED that is referred to a real
protection application: direct intertrip scheme. Efforts in the
relay community to minimize this total time would benefit the
relay protection applications.
REFERENCES
[1] Communication Networks and Systems in Substations 2003, IEC 61850,
1st ed.
[2] The introduction of IEC 61850 and its impact on protection and
automation within substations, Cigré Technical Brochure 326,
WG B5.11, ISBN : 978-2-85873-015-5, 2007
[3] H. Ito, K. Ohasi, “High Performance IEC 61850 GOOSE and Protection
Relay Testing”, PAC World Magazine, winter 2008
[4] R. Aguilar, “Megger Goose Configurator (MGC)”, Application Bulletin,
Megger, 2009
[5] MPRT User’s Manual, Megger, 2009