What is GOOSE?

The Generic Object Oriented Substation Event (GOOSE) model provides the possibility for a fast and reliable system-wide distribution of input and output values. GOOSE messages are “published” by a device via Ethernet multicast such that they can be “subscribed” by any number of other devices.

These messages are based on datasets. While IEC 61850 allows any dataset to be used with GOOSE, the practical uses suggest that the datasets should contain fairly small numbers of status values and their related quality information. A change in value of any dataset member is considered a change of “state”, the new information is published immediately. The message is then retransmitted in case of lost packets or devices coming online which need the current state. In order to preserve bandwidth, the delay between retransmissions grows over time from minTime immediately following the state change to maxTime at the steady state condition.

NEXT: Subscribing to GOOSE