Is your grid communications network prepared for the future?

The adoption of IEC 61850 and virtualisation technologies are set to fundamentally change grid protection, automation and control in substations.

Substations are a complicated piece of electricity infrastructure, traditionally filled with numerous devices connected with numerous bundles of copper cables.

But the era of digitalisation is enabling fundamental changes, with the evolution dating back to the mid-1980s with one of the pioneers, Grid to Great, formerly Locamation, starting to work on the concept.

“We started digitising substations, what today would be called ‘software-defined substations’, with proprietary solutions,” recalls Rob Roodenburg, Solution Architect at Grid to Great, a Dutch company spun out of the University of Enschede and supported by Alliander.

Over 150 substation implementations later, we realised there was the need for a standardised approach, he continues, pointing to IEC61850 and virtualisation as the next step in enabling remote operation of the hardware for the protection, automation and control functions.

“One can then centralise these functions and manage the software independently of the hardware and also it makes the design and construction work simpler for both new builds and renovations, so it has a lot of advantages.”

IEC 61850 and virtualisation

This is then where IEC 61850, the standard describing all the elements of a substation and the communication protocols, and virtualisation come in, to deliver the full digitalisation of the substation.

“IEC 61850 has introduced new digital concepts for the substation and its application enables interoperability between the components from different vendors,” explains Dominique Verhulst, Global Head of Energy at Nokia, which has played a lead role in supporting its uptake by electricity utilities.

Add virtualisation to that and it enables the number of devices, and the space required for them in the substation, to be more than halved, with approximately 70% reduction in the operation and maintenance costs. This is largely due to the remote access and avoidance of field visits, he comments.

It also improves both the availability and security capabilities, he adds, as it can enable the running of protection functions in more resilient modes not only at the level of the substation and between substations, but also at the level of the command-and-control centre.

To illustrate the fast-growing interest and importance of virtualisation, Verhulst mentions the vPAC Alliance, which is driving a software-defined architecture for substations, having increased its membership by more than half over the past year, with many of them power utilities.

“They are now driving this innovation and it’s not just vendors or manufacturers.”

More content on IEC 61850:
IEC 61850 – the standard to digitalise and automate power grids
Webinar: Modernizing electrical substations: Using IEC 61850 for digitalization and integration
Energy Transitions Podcast: How IEC 61850 is revolutionizing the utility industry
Futureproofing the utility of the future with IEC 61850

Virtualisation architecture

Roodenburg outlines the vision of substation digitalisation in three parts – first to digitise at the source with smart sensors, i.e. at or as close as possible to the primary switchgear, then to centralise and virtualise the data and analytics outside the substation with the software independent from the hardware.

“With this the copper cables can be replaced with fibre optics and the traditional IEDs also can be centralised and this replacement of physical devices with servers and software functions means the substation can be much more compact,” he says.

The vendor interoperability is enabled with the IEC 61850 process and station buses at the interfaces.

“It also means the functionality can be easily upgraded with a software update, rather than requiring an exchange of devices.”

The other functionality the virtualisation enables is wide area monitoring, protection and control, Roodenburg highlights.

“This opens the box of possibilities of what one can do with wide area protection schemes. Also, with all the congestion in the grid, we can for example do dynamic cable ratings and other similar assessments and these solutions really support that.”

Technical considerations

Turning to the technical aspects of virtualisation, Hansen Chan, IP Solution Marketing Enterprise at Nokia, highlights the key role of cloud networking in the substation and a WAN to support virtualisation.

“The cloud is simply a methodology but forms the underpinning of the data infrastructure extending from the data centre to the edge in the substation,” he says.

“There are multiple use cases ranging from critical protection and control applications to non-safety critical applications such as fault location and the use of CCTV and video analytics for the physical security of the substation.”

Implementing this requires a blueprint with segregated OT and IT zones, he comments, also mentioning the need for a blueprint for the essential requirement of time synchronisation, which is required for device coordination and (near) real-time grid management.

“This flexibility of virtualisation introduces a more dynamic environment in the compute, with all the applications, whether in the virtualised substation or on the virtualised data centre side, able to communicate with each other and to perform the task of keeping the grid running.”

Beyond the substation, the network connectivity extends into the WAN and the OT cloud in the data centre to connect to virtualised grid management applications such as an Advanced Distribution Management System (ADMS).

Therefore, end-to-end cloud networking spanning from the substation LAN to the WAN to the data centre network is foundational to the ambition of virtualization.

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Looking ahead

While the concept of the virtualised substation is still emerging with the first examples being implemented, technology doesn’t stand still, and further developments are being investigated.

For example, Grid to Great and Nokia are partnering on ongoing tests on aspects such as removing the dependency on physical IEDs by taking the protection intelligence out of the embedded hardware and onto industrial compute hardware, on different resiliency schemes and the behaviour under PTP time source changes.

Another area is the implementation of edge computing and edge AI in the substation.

“This would open the way for data analysis and event detection and then action by an automation controller within the substation and the blueprint we propose would enable utilities to embrace these technologies,” concludes Chan.