The future of power system substations may be redefined by the application of virtualization. At least that is what an increasing number of utilities are envisioning as they explore the opportunity for increased virtualization in substation design. In this future, there would be a significant reduction in the hardware used in substations. Instead, tasks will be carried out on cloud servers, marking a noticeable shift from the current reliance on extensive racks of hardware.
The appeal for utilities is the significant cost reduction for substation design and engineering, reduced usage of copper wiring, and the ability to easily replicate substation designs for future expansions.
“Consider that today’s substation can have 200 or more independent [hardware] boxes each performing a dedicated task,” says Jeremy Anderson, Senior Vice President of Product Development at NovaTech Automation, a leading U.S. provider of automation and engineering solutions for power utilities headquartered in Quakertown, PA. “That’s a tremendous amount of wire to pull, hardware to maintain, and it continues to become more and more congested. In a virtual digital substation, two or three servers run everything.”
With this in mind, NovaTech has spent the past year creating a virtual version of its Orion Substation Automation Platform to run on any server. The system is hosted on a host machine known as a hypervisor and servers powered by Intel CPUs. The Orion is a communication and automation processor that can connect to nearly any substation device in its native protocol, perform advanced math and logic, and securely present the source or calculated data to any number of clients in their own protocol.
According to Anderson, there is a coordinated push by some large investor owned utilities in the United States and globally to move to the “digital substation.” Still, not all utilities are ready to pull the plug on the traditional substation design quite yet.
“Most utilities aren’t moving in this direction at this point,” explains Anderson. “But they are certainly investigating it thoroughly with the plan to move in this direction in the coming years.”
For more information on Orion substation automation solutions can be found at the NovaTech Automation website, www.novatechautomation.com/solutions/substation-automation, or by contacting (484) 812-6000.