Our Key Takeaways from Digital&Virtual Substations

Im3 at the IEEE T&D Conference and Exposition

Image: one of the inspiring slides presented by John Hart, Duke Energy “IEC 61850 for Distribution: Applications Outside the Substation Fence”

The Department of Energy (DOE) is in the process of taking full advantage of the authorities provided in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to make historic investments in US power system (Michael Pesin, Office of Electricity). One of the key focus technologies of the pathway to innovative grid liftoff is Substation Automation & Digitization.

The use of current (Rogowski Coil and LPCT) and voltage (RVD and CVD) sensors for protection and distribution networks is the key to major safety, sustainability and performance gains (Lukas Cesky and Harsh Karandikar, ABB)

Adopting IEC 61850 gives utilities the ability to design and build protection, control and automation schemes more quickly and efficiently, and provide easy access to data to drive solutions to operate substations and the overall system better (Rich Hunt, Quanta Technology; Phil Vansant, Dominion Energy; Bill Winters, Con Edison; John Bettler, ComEd and John Hart, Duke Energy).

Nowadays exist several Centralized Protection and Control (CPC) and Virtualized Protection and Control (VPC) substations in operation all around the world. It is a very competitive state-of-the-art technology and a key trend for the Grid of the Future (Prithpal Khajuria, Intel Corp; Kirk Tisdal, Salt River Project; Kevin Ludwig, Black&Veatch and Joemoan I. Xavier, ABB).

The fastest developing technology for future digital substations is VPC. Utilities can choose between Hardware, Kernel-based and OS Level virtualization solutions (Dinesh Baradi, ABB).

See you again at the 2026 PES T&D Conference & Exposition in Chicago!

For further information please contact US@ingenieros-im3.com