Substations have gotten extra advanced with higher calls for positioned on the community and connectivity. To handle these challenges, our prospects requested us to ship a next-generation routing answer that builds upon our 10+ years of utility routing experience – and we’ve fulfilled that request with the brand new Cisco Catalyst IR8340 Rugged Router.
The Catalyst IR8340 is rather more than a brand new model of its predecessor, the Cisco 2010 Related Grid Router. The Catalyst IR8340 is an all-new industrial routing platform that delivers highly effective and versatile capabilities. It meets the substation wants of right this moment and its modular upgradability will meet future wants with ease.
Earlier than we dive deeper into the way it might help you meet the growing calls for in your substation, let’s focus on the background that led to this extremely succesful and distinctive platform.
Substation community operators are dealing with many challenges within the operational panorama. One among these is the growing complexity of balancing the big range of recent energy era belongings (resembling photo voltaic and wind) with an equally advanced consumption mannequin (resembling enhance in electrical automobile charging). This real-time balancing act requires operators to join extra belongings for elevated visibility and management. Very often it calls for increased bandwidth with decrease latency in a confined operational footprint.
The truth is, many utilities require extra capabilities in the identical footprint of their networking infrastructure to allow them to scale back prices (rack house, energy, cooling) and simplify the substation community complexity to assist troubleshooting.
Because the utility grid turns into extra automated, the reliance on the supporting communications community infrastructure turns into much more crucial to the reliability and effectivity of the grid itself. This enhance in grid digitization additionally enlarges the cyber safety menace floor. Regulators and utilities try for an ever-increasing safety posture as many conventional substation safety approaches come up quick on account of lack of asset visibility and centralized safety coverage enforcement.
Lastly, with this enlargement of linked belongings within the substation and the fixed drive for operational effectivity, utilities are challenged on how one can:
- Deploy networking gear simply at scale and with centralized configuration management to cut back discipline visits.
- Handle and function these new networks by their lifecycle and guarantee highest reliability.
- Safe the substation and supply asset reporting the place required.
To unravel these challenges, utilities are working towards full-scale grid modernization — together with substation automation. So, it’s now not a matter of if however when and how they are going to improve.
Based mostly on greater than a decade of worldwide collaboration with the utility {industry}, we now have developed options to digitize and automate substations together with the brand new Cisco Catalyst IR8340 Rugged Router.
It supplies excessive efficiency routing (WAN, SDWAN), switching (substation LAN), safety, timing, and edge compute, all from a single platform. It’s particularly designed for the efficiency challenges of any substation automation structure with a small footprint and ruggedized type issue (licensed to IEC61850-3 and IEEE1613).
The Catalyst IR8340 is a part of a brand new Cisco validated strategy to substation automation and administration. Along with the not too long ago launched Cisco Catalyst IE9300 Rugged Sequence Switches, the routers present a validated structure that unifies the substation LAN and WAN – including the efficiency, safety, scale, and administration required for the modernization of the substation.
5 necessities for the next-generation substation
Persevering with on from our earlier weblog, let’s evaluation the important thing factors that tackle 5 crucial capabilities for a contemporary substation close to the Catalyst IR8340:
- Efficiency at scale. Utilities are requested to attach extra belongings at increased velocity with extra belongings streaming extra information (e.g., synchro phasors). The Cisco Catalyst IR8340 Rugged Router supplies 2 WAN ports and 12 LAN ports all inside the similar chassis with additional modules supported to broaden the WAN choices. The Catalyst IR8340 has dramatically higher throughput on the WAN and LAN ports (assessments have proven approx. 950Mbps for each LAN and WAN ports carrying combined site visitors) than its predecessor, the CGR2010. The router additionally supplies routing and switching capabilities because it’s a single built-in platform. As well as, the Catalyst IR8340 additionally delivers IP/MPLS assist to the substation edge and helps Cisco’s SDWAN answer as a ruggedized router.
- Asset visibility and cyber menace detection. Utilizing the built-in edge compute capabilities of the Catalyst IR8340 as a safety sensor, Cisco Cyber Imaginative and prescient allows utilities to achieve an correct, real-time view of their substation belongings (visibility and vulnerabilities relevant) instantly inside the substation networks, particularly when paired with Cisco Catalyst IE switches. This supplies operations employees with East-West site visitors visibility throughout the substation LAN, in addition to North-South site visitors visibility by way of the WAN to the management middle. It additionally displays community exercise and flags anomalous behaviors that might point out malicious exercise—all with none exterior sensors requiring devoted SPAN port site visitors connections.
- Enterprise-grade administration and automation. Substation operators are more and more managing their substations as scaled IT belongings, using the deep information and capabilities of Cisco’s industry-leading community safety and administration instruments. The Catalyst IR8340 runs Cisco IOS-XE and builds upon this utilizing Cisco DNA Heart for automation, assurance, and compliance, in addition to leveraging Cisco safety features resembling TrustSec, MACsec, 802.1x, VRF, VLAN, and Versatile NetFlow to the substation LAN by way of the built-in switching ports. As a Catalyst router it additionally delivers Cisco SD-WAN to the substation, so you may securely simplify deployment and administration, in addition to save prices by configuring SD-WAN to pick out probably the most related information transport path for various kinds of site visitors.
- Assist for {industry} normal protocols. The Catalyst IR8340 helps many protocols related to the substation, together with IEC62439-3 PRP & HSR for redundancy (the Catalyst IR8340 is appearing as a PRP RedBox or HSR DANH), Cisco REP for ring topologies and a number of spanning tree variants. The timing module supplies a direct GNSS connection and supplies IEEE1588 PTP timing as a Grandmaster for the substation LAN, supporting C37.238 energy profile and IEC61850-9-3 PUP. It helps broadly used substation protocols resembling IEC61850 (Layer 2 GOOSE, SV and layer 3 MMS), IEC104, DNP3, and Modbus, which are important to substation operations. The Catalyst IR8340 natively helps serial connections by way of the serial interface module to offer both protocol translation (IEC101 to 104 and Serial DNP3 to DNP3 over IP) or tunneling of serial information throughout the community (utilizing TCP/UDP Uncooked Sockets characteristic) permitting prospects to assist legacy serial belongings whereas migrating to ethernet enabled units. The Catalyst IR8340 additionally supplies assist for T1/E1 WAN connections by way of a community module for integration into present SONET/SDH transport environments to ease the transfer to IP based mostly applied sciences.
- Utility internet hosting and edge compute. Substation operators are in search of methods to run purposes regionally of their space-constrained substation rugged environments. The Catalyst IR8340 is designed with this want in thoughts and with assist for Cisco IOx to energy Cisco Cyber Imaginative and prescient and the utility’s personal purposes inside the substation. Examples embody digital RTUs, safety purposes, and plenty of extra.
Benefits of utilizing the Catalyst IR8340 for subsequent era substation automation
- The Catalyst IR8340 has one thing to supply for each IT and OT groups, with highly effective automation instruments obtainable to go well with both.
- The Catalyst IR8340 is a key element being validated as an integral a part of the brand new Cisco Substation Automation validated Designs.
- The Catalyst IR8340 supplies connectivity and adaptability for now and the longer term with 4 enlargement slots, so you may add 5G, P-LTE, FirstNet, 450Mhz, and future connectivity applied sciences, or extra storage or compute every time it’s wanted. Additionally, you will have 4 copper, 4 combo, 4 SFP LAN ports, and a couple of combo WAN ports on the prepared.
- The Catalyst IR8340 condenses a number of historically separate parts right into a single platform: WAN router, LAN switching with PRP/HSR/REP assist, PTP Timing, and Safety (Zone Based mostly firewall, Cisco Cyber Imaginative and prescient Sensor).
- And it suits into the identical rack house because the CGR2010!
So, to your subsequent substation automation venture, contemplate the Cisco Catalyst IR8340 Rugged Router and its versatile characteristic wealthy capabilities. You can begin with easy use circumstances for safe connectivity and allow extra capabilities as your operational necessities evolve (e.g., enabling the Cisco Cyber Imaginative and prescient sensor, including substation timing by including the Timing Module or including non-public or public mobile assist by way of the vary of 4G/5G Modules).
Study extra
Cisco Catalyst IR8340 Rugged Router Datasheet
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