Trends in Centralized Protection and Control in Digital Substations
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24084/repqj21.266Keywords:
Digital substation, IEC 61850, process bus, centralized protection, and control, virtualizationAbstract
In recent years, the trend of digitalization has sped up in all economic and industry sectors. In the electric power sector, new digital technologies will introduce deep changes in the architecture of protection and control systems of future electric substations to adapt to a new environment with increasing levels of inverter-based and distributed energy resources along with a large number of sensors, automation equipment and other control, protection and measurement devices. This paper reviews the evolution of the traditional substation toward new protection and control architectures based on new computer and communication technologies. The main characteristics of virtualization technologies are also analyzed, as well as the benefits and main challenges in its application in substation protection and automation systems.