Time synchronization and its application in substation

Time synchronization is very important for the fault analysis, supervision and control and operation management of electrical power system. To explore further application of time synchronization technology, all the available time synchronization signal sources in the world and practical time synchronization scheme in substations are introduced firstly. Then the error sources of time synchronization are analyzed and corresponding countermeasures are proposed. The application of time synchronization in various areas and its future are pointed out. It is pointed out that GPS remains as the main time resource, time message together with pulse signal is still a good solution to get high accuracy. IEEE 1588 will become the principal way to achieve high accuracy time synchronization in the future; BEIDOU satellite navigation system may provide another reliable time resource; new functions based on time synchronization, such as sync-phasor measurement will be developed furtherly.