Seamless communication redundancy of IEC 62439

Today, Ethernet Communication technology is the backbone of Substation Automation. Reliability of the communication connection is crucial. Therefore, known redundancy of Main A/B protection is not good enough in many cases, redundancy of the communication has to be provided. Common Ethernet Media Redundancy systems have a so-called reconfiguration time where the network is busy by itself in terms of re-establishing the system. During this time, no user data communication can take place. This time can be short and reaches from 50ms to seconds in very large, meshed systems. IEC 62439-3 offers Ethernet redundancy without reconfiguration time. This will enhance reliability of substation communication and enable new applications.