Analysis of Time Synchronization Protocols on Fledge Platform for Smart Grid Applications

Accurate and precise time synchronization is critical in Smart Grid applications for accurate data collection, efficient energy distribution, and reliable system monitoring and control. Edge computing platforms have recently emerged as a promising solution for managing substantial amounts of data and computational requirements in a variety of application contexts, including Smart Grids. This approach allows for a reduction in the amount of information transmitted to the supervision systems of Distribution System Operators (DSO), a reduction in response latency, and an increase in overall system efficiency and reliability. This article provides an evaluation of various time synchronization protocols that can be implemented on the open-source edge computing framework Fledge, as well as the performance that can be achieved for smart grid applications. The Fledge framework has been deployed on a fan less industrial PC platform, equipped with network cards supporting in hardware the PTP protocol and the hardware timestamp of external events. The performance of various synchronization techniques commonly used in Smart Grids, such as Network Time Protocol (NTP), Precision Time Protocol (PTP), and Global Positioning System (GPS), was evaluated and compared. The results show that, while PTP has the highest precision and accuracy, NTP and GPS-based methods have better scalability.