The increasing installation of distributed energy resources during the last years has led to a fundamental change in the power system structure. As a consequence, utility operators are faced with new challenges in grid planning and control. The consideration of smart grids show promising results in increasing the hosting capacity for distributed and renewable resources. Standardized automation, control, and communication systems are important keys to realize such intelligent methods. This paper focuses on a deployment methodology of IEC 61850 on an experimental platform for smart grid system. We were interested in evaluating the performance of the GOOSE communication. A standard‐based communication approach for distributed energy resources is introduced and implemented. It uses the IEC 61850 interoperability approach as well as the GOOSE communication for distributed automation. The implementation methodology is provided to handle the hierarchical architecture of distributed control applications. In order to show the advantages of the proposed methodology, a combined analytical and experimental approach is demonstrated for evaluation of GOOSE communication performances.