With the increase in the monitoring of operational data at very high rates in high voltage substations and the ability to time synchronize these data with global positioning systems, there is a growing need for transmitting this data for monitoring, operation, protection, and control needs. The sets of data that need to be transferred and the speed at which they need to be transferred depend on the application-for example, slow for postevent analysis, near real time for monitoring and as close to real time as possible for control or protection. In this paper, we describe GridStat, a novel middleware framework we have developed to provide flexible, robust, and secure data communications for the power grid's operations. Test results demonstrate that such a flexible framework can also guarantee latency that is suitable for fast wide-area protection and control.

The present communication architecture supporting control of the electric power grid makes it difficult to use the wealth of data collected at high rates in substations, retarding their use in new applications for controlling the grid. A flexible, real-time data network would make it possible to use these data for many more control and protection applications, potentially increasing the grid's reliability and increasing its operating efficiency. Applications that could use these data include: decentralised load frequency control; closed-loop voltage control; transient and small-signal stabilisation; and special protection schemes using data gathered over a wide area. Such applications and the flexibility of the underlying communication network imply greater data sharing between utilities, leading to new performance, availability and reliability requirements. This paper examines the security, trust and Quality of Service (QoS) requirements imposed by these applications and shows how they are met by mechanisms included in the GridStat middleware framework that we are developing.

The emergence of phasor measurement units (PMUs) coupled with GPS time devices makes it feasible to directly compare timestamped measurements collected at different locations without needing to account for clock drift. GridStat is a flexible publish-subscribe status dissemination middleware framework with capabilities that include rate-filtered multicast for each subscription. In this paper we explore GridStat's ability to hide the complexities of distributed systems from application developers while efficiently providing time-synchronous groups of PMU data from physically disparate locations.

The g-Eclipse framework provides a general, integrated workbench toolset for grid users, operators and developers. Based on the open source eclipse ecosystem, g-Eclipse supports scientists to interact with grid resources independent of the underlying grid middleware. Its main objective is to deliver an extensible framework for different grid actors, by providing a unified abstraction of the grid. The grid abstraction enables grid application users to access the grid in a desktop-like manner with wizards specific for common use cases; it also provides a set of visual configuration tools to maintain and configure grid resources.