Patent ID: 7693607

Claim:
A system for protection, control, and monitoring of delivery of electric power energy, said system comprising: an input/output interface device comprising a first brick coupled with a piece of primary equipment and configured to receive field data from the piece of primary equipment; a second brick redundantly coupled with the piece of primary equipment and configured to receive the field data from the piece of primary equipment; at least one intelligent electronic device (“IED”) configured to receive field data from the first brick and the second brick; a patch panel coupled with the first brick and the second brick and each of the at least one IED, the patch panel being configured to route the field data from the first brick and the second brick to selected ones of the at least one IED; a first communication link independently coupling each of the first brick and the second brick to the patch panel; and a second communication link independently coupling the patch panel to each of the at least one IED, wherein the first brick and the second brick are configured to transmit said field data to the selected ones of the at least one IED and to synchronize the transmission of the field data to a sampling clock signal of each of the selected ones of said at least one IED, wherein each of the at least one IED is configured to independently establish a phase lock loop across each communication link with associated ones of the first brick and second brick to provide the sampling clock signal to the first brick and the second brick.