Wide area network performance study of a distribution management system

Distribution automation is considered a necessity for providing better power service in a more competitive environment. When new automatic functions are included in a distribution management system (DMS), loadings of the data links in the supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system will become very heavy. In order to maintain a proper performance, system upgrade or migration will need to be considered. Two wide area network (WAN) architectures for a Taiwan Power Companyʹs regional DMS are investigated. The WAN modeling presented in this paper is aimed to verify whether the hardware design could accommodate the communications load and to avoid overpaying for network equipments. Simulation results indicate that, to cover feeder automation functions, a WAN with distributed processing capability would provide better SCADA performance than an extension of the old centralized system.