By Rich Hunt, Byron Flynn,

and Terry Smith

The
Substation
of the
Future
Moving Toward
a Digital Solution

T
THE SUBSTATION OF THE FUTURE WILL MOVE AWAY FROM THE
current single-purpose, hardware-based protection and automation sys-
tems and replace them with a software-defined control system running
virtual services: a digitally enabled substation. This is necessary to enable
substation systems to adapt to the new reality of an increasing amount of
inverter-based distributed energy resources (DERs) changing operating
requirements and affecting feeder power flow, voltage, and protection
functions. Wind power, solar power, battery storage, and electric vehicles
(EVs) may be connected anywhere to the grid. Unless operation is coor-
dinated, the geographic concentration of DERs by different owners could
potentially result in a negative impact to the existing grid.
Future power system control is likely to be more cooperative and negoti-
ated because operators and control functions will have to plan for and quickly
©ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/OLASER

adapt to changes in available resources and power flows. Transmission and

distribution planners, engineers, and asset managers will need information

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPE.2019.2908122

Date of publication: 18 June 2019

july/august 2019 1540-7977/19©2019IEEE ieee power & energy magazine 47

 from the grid to drive an evolving set of applications and ana-
lytics. Utilities, systems owners, and a host of new DER stake-
holders will need to be able to roll out new applications and
access an increasing amount of grid data to optimize their
investments. Old schemes will need to be adapted quickly and
reliably throughout the entire system. The only way to provide
the adaptability and flexibility required within fast time con-
straints is to use an application-driven hardware- and vendor-
independent ecosystem. As the grid evolves, future substations
will require applications to be developed for a specific need
and then pushed out to every substation, similar to the current
smartphone ecosystem.
Digitally Enabled Substation Architecture
A reference architecture for the first version of a digitally
enabled substation is shown in Figure 1. The substation
in this architecture is fully digital: every analog interface
will be digitized directly at the interface, with data shared
to communications networks in the substation. This means
that the state and behavior of the power system and primary
equipment are readily available as digital data wherever
needed. The control of primary equipment is through digital
interfaces as well. Therefore, a required step for the substa-
tion of the future is the full implementation of process bus
to interface data from primary equipment to devices, such as
protection relays, bay control units, equipment monitoring
devices, and phasor measurement units (PMUs).
The key component in this architecture is the substation
edge device, which is a processing platform running soft-
ware services using a container-based architecture. Every
application is developed as a service running independently
of the others, each entirely in its own container, as seen in
Figure 2. Data can be shared across or between containers as
necessary, so functions, for instance, the security manager
and control plane, are shared. The substation edge device
is also the communications interface between the substation

Utility
Cloud Enterprise

Distribution
Mobile
Automation

Microgrid

Substation Edge Device

Security Services

Edge Manager
Data Collector
Data Services

Control Plane
Analytics
Apps

Apps

Apps

Station Bus

Protection and Monitoring and

Bay Control Unit PMU
Control Relay Diagnostic Devices

Process Bus
Process Digital Process
Interface Unit Instrument Sensing Interface Unit
Transformer

figure 1. A digitally enabled substation.

48 ieee power & energy magazine july/august 2019

 Substations can be continually updated to meet new operating
conditions and operating requirements without having to perform
complete upgrades or recommission impacted equipment.

and wide-area applications. This includes distribution auto-
mation applications, such DER management, fault detec-
tion and isolation, microgrid integration, and connections to
cloud applications and utility system operations. One result-
ing function of this device is essentially to be a communica-
tions interface and data concentrator for wide-area applica-
tions connected through the substation.
The benefit of this architecture is the ability to develop
applications that run as software services. Any application,
such as asset performance management (APM), wide-area
monitoring, and DER management, can be independently
developed, quickly prototyped, and rapidly type tested.
These new applications can then be loaded into the substa-
tion edge device without requiring a firmware upgrade or
impacting services or applications already working the
edge device. New functionality through new applications
can be rolled out automatically and remotely to all sub-
stations quickly and with little risk. Therefore, substa-
tions can be continually updated to meet new operating
conditions and operating requirements without hav-
ing to perform complete upgrades or recommission
impacted equipment.
Why Do We See This Direction?
Utility operators will interact and cooperate with potentially
thousands of new devices, including residential solar invert-
ers, solar farms, ac and dc EVs connected to the distribution
system, and battery storage. There will also be new types of
distribution operators, including microgrid owners and vir-
tual power plants. The new operations system must quickly
model and instantly represent new control devices of any
type, at any location, and in multiples of thousands of such
devices. At the distribution level especially, the substation
will be the key data concentrator for this type of interface.
As the power system becomes more unpredictable and has
less hierarchical control, better situational awareness is needed.
The substation becomes a key source of data for situational
intelligence for both transmission and distribution. Wide-area
monitoring systems must integrate PMUs from transmission
networks and the micro-PMUs increasingly found on distri-
bution networks. Beyond situational intelligence, monitoring
systems will be necessary to operate the substation better
to maximize the usage of power system equipment, such as
transformers. APM will, therefore, be a mission-critical func-
tion to ensure that power system components can dynamically

Asset Bay Control

Performance
Management Distance
Protection

Domain U Real-Time Domain

Domain 0

Real-Time Container 1 Container 2 Real-Time Real-Time

Container Container 1 Container 2
Engine
Control Plane App App
Security Services Resource App App
Data Collector Bins/Libraries Bins/Libraries
Management
Data Services Bins/Libraries Bins/Libraries
Container Engine
Hypervisor
Hardware

figure 2. A substation edge device concept.

july/august 2019 ieee power & energy magazine 49

 Substation automation functions and any other functions that
do not operate in absolute real time, including equipment
monitoring, will become services in the substation edge device.
and reliably support changing power flows and operating sce-
narios. New types of analytic applications may be required to
coordinate storm response when the distribution system is also
a source, to do better network modeling that allows dynamic
line loading, and even to perform local state estimation for
operations and dynamic protection. Developing and adding
these new applications as software services are the only cost-
effective and timely ways to provide them.
This version of the substation of the future shows protec-
tion and substation automation as standalone devices, as in
today’s substations. However, this cannot continue. Substa-
tion automation functions and any other functions that do
not operate in absolute real time, including equipment moni-
toring, will become services in the substation edge device.
As distribution circuits become strong sources because of
DERs and become more networked, distribution protection
will adopt transmission protection techniques, such as line
differential and teleprotection schemes. Relay settings will
be more dynamic at both the transmission and distribution
level. Relays must operate reliably for the different network
conditions and levels of short circuit current resulting from
variable resources coming online and offline. Faults must
be identified and cleared correctly, even in the presence
of declining system inertia and decreased system stability
clearing times. The only cost-effective and timely manner to
meet these needs will be to roll out new protection schemes
as a software service so that protection will become a real-
time application in the substation edge device.
Next Steps
The substation of the future is both fully digital and digitally
enabled for applications running as software services. The
substation of today is not. It is important to understand the
steps to go from the substation architecture of today to one
of the future. In a practical manner, this requires two sepa-
rate steps.
One step is to go fully digital. Communications between
substation gateways and zone devices, for example, protec-
tive relays and bay control units, are already digital. The
complete digital substation means implementing process
buses, which are distributed input/output (I/O) devices for
protection and control and substation automation. A pro-
cess bus digitizes the interfaces to all primary equipment,
including binary status and control points for circuit break-
ers and power transformers, and all analog data, such as cur-
rents and voltages from instrument transformers. Commu-
nications used in this process are defined by the IEC 61850
50 ieee power & energy magazine july/august 2019
standard. Going fully digital by implementing process bus
is a step that can be taken today. The technology needed
is widely commercially available, and going fully digital
provides many benefits today in terms of both capital and
operating expenses.
The other step is to be digitally enabled using a substation
edge device that supports a software services architecture.
This concept is shown in Figure 3. Such devices, designed
for applications in utility substations, are becoming avail-
able in the market. Substation edge devices will first imple-
ment standard substation gateway functions, and then they
will support other new power system and control applica-
tions as they are developed. Future versions will support the
addition of a real-time operating system so that protection
functions can be created as applications. Therefore, all appli-
cation processing in a substation will be a software service
in the substation edge device, centralizing protection, auto-
mation, monitoring, and analytics. The next step is to start
defining the necessary new applications and system operat-
ing conditions while evaluating substation edge devices as
they become available.
Process Bus
The goal of a digital substation is maximum flexibility and
adaptability. To make this possible, it is necessary to sepa-
rate the control functions, including protective relaying, from
the primary equipment being controlled. The way to do this
is process bus, where analog values are converted to digital
sampled values at the primary equipment, and these sampled
values, along with status and control signals, are transmitted
through a communications channel to protection equipment.
Digitization takes place in simple I/O devices integrated
into primary equipment using the data models and message
formats of the IEC 61850 standard. Process bus facilitates
flexibility and adaptability because the basic data for state,
status, and control of the substation are available on the pro-
cess bus network. Any device or application connected to
this network can subscribe to the data without impacting
other devices or applications and without connecting to the
primary equipment.
The reason to use the IEC 61850 standard for communica-
tions is to provide a future-proof digital substation architec-
ture that can be easily configured, updated, and maintained.
The configuration of a process bus system is easily verified
through standard tools, as the data models provide a self-
description of the data being sent. The majority of messages
are event driven, using a multicast publish–subscribe model.
This means that adding a device or application is a matter
of publishing messages to the network and subscribing to
the appropriate messages already on the network. These
features of IEC 61850 communications make a process bus
solution future proof. Any device or application supporting
IEC 61850 can connect to the network and interoperate with
any other device on the network while using the same con-
figuration tools.
Tools to Implement Process Bus
An IEC 61850 process bus architecture is implemented with
discrete devices connected in standard ways to provide sys-
tem solutions. The discrete devices consist of process inter-
face units (PIUs), digital instrument transformers (DITs),
communication networks, clocks, and intelligent electronic
devices (IEDs).
PIUs will exist close to the primary equipment and be
the interface between the electrical physical world and the
digital world. Their role is publish information from the pri-
mary equipment and control it from digitized control signals
on the communications networks. These PIUs will control
circuit breakers and switches, connect to traditional cur-
rent transformers (CTs) and voltage transformers (VTs), and
Cloud
Mobile
Substation Edge Device
Control as App
Protection and
Data Services
Bay Control
Analytics
as App
Apps
Process Bus
Process Digital
Interface Unit Instrument
Transformer
figure 3. A fully digitally enabled substation.
july/august 2019 ieee power & energy magazine 51
publish both equipment signals and digital sampled values to
IEDs for protection and operation purposes.
CTs and VTs will likely be replaced by DITs, which
are nonconventional instrument transformers (NCITs)
connected through a merging unit to output digital sam-
pled values of current and voltage. NCITs use differ-
ent measurement techniques from wire-wound CTs and
VTs. Examples of NCITs are fiber-optic current sensors,
Rogowski coils, and capacitive and resistive voltage divid-
ers. In most applications, NCITs must be DITs. The output
of an NCIT is a low-energy analog signal that must be
sent digitally to ease the interfacing with equipment and
avoid interference issues because of distance and shield-
ing. DITs are not subject to the inaccuracies of the excita-
tion losses of a traditional iron-core transformer and can
provide superior accuracy across a large band. The high
accuracies of DITs will simplify and unlock new methods
of protection.
Many of today’s protection algorithms have limitations
regarding the accuracy of instrument transformers, and
major portions of the protection algorithms exist to deal
with those inaccuracies. A prime example of this is the tradi-
tional sloped differential characteristic that accommodates
Utility
Enterprise
Distribution
Automation
Microgrid
Security Services
Edge Manager
Data Collector
Control Plane
Process
Sensing Interface Unit
 CT inaccuracy and saturation. Because DITs can be linearly
accurate for all levels of current, the sloped differential
characteristic will be unnecessary for differential protection
when using DITs. DITs also eliminate the oil used as the
insulating medium in traditional standalone CTs and VTs.
This lack of oil reduces not only the possible environmental
impact but also the weight and size of the instrument trans-
former, and thereby decreasing installation time.
The PIUs will publish and subscribe to data from a commu-
nication network. The 61850 standard defines Ethernet as the
physical architecture of the process bus communication net-
work. Ethernet’s packet-switched architecture allows multiple
protocols to run across the same network, which maximizes
the use of the communication infrastructure. While point-to-
point Ethernet is an allowed implementation of the 61850 stan-
dard, switched Ethernet process bus will be the physical archi-
tecture of larger substations in the future. The Ethernet switch
will be the backbone of these networks. These switches will be
configured devices in the process bus networks used to con-
trol and shape the flow of traffic in the network using virtual
local area networks, media-access-control address filtering,
and deterministic Ethernet solutions, such as time-sensitive
networking. The switches will also need to be configured to
maintain security and pass timing signals.
Clocks will become a critical protection component in
the substation of the future because of the need to syn-
chronize published streams of data, as this is necessary
for all of the published streams of analog data. Otherwise,
elements, such as differential protection, may misoper-
ate because of the wrongly calculated angular differences
associated with communication latency. Several clock
synchronizing methods exist today, but all signals that can
be communicated over the network will be sent that way
rather than through wired communications. Therefore,
future substations will use the precision time protocol sig-
nal defined in the IEEE 1588 standard.
IEDs will be the application containers of the substation
of the future. These containers will subscribe to data and then
use that data to make protection decisions, provide operation
data, or provide monitoring and diagnostic data. These con-
tainers will also control and operate the substation based on
the data that they subscribe to. In the substation of the future,
discrete IEDs will be replaced by a single IED that acts as
the centralized protection unit. The centralized protection
unit will make all protection decisions for the substation and
will act as a gateway to serve operational and maintenance
data. This centralized protection unit will likely be included
in the substation edge device. Because all digital substation
components are critical to the protection of the substation,
redundancy, for PIUs, IEDs, clocks, and communications
networks, will have to be addressed at each level.
Benefits of Process Bus
Process bus brings clear benefits to the substation of today, and
those benefits will drive the adoption of the substation of the
52 ieee power & energy magazine july/august 2019
future. Benefits include reduced expenditures, smaller substa-
tion footprints, and flexibility and adaptability of the substation.
Capital expense reduction is the most often-touted benefit. This
decrease does not come from a cutback of equipment, because
there will be more actual equipment in the substation. Rather,
it comes from reduction of labor to design and construct the
substation. This decrease of labor on the design side will be
realized through the tools that configure the substation. The
designer will configure the substation through software tools
rather than design the substation as is done today.
Because the substation will be a standard configuration,
it will be easier to duplicate than today’s designs. With a
duplicated design, the designer can create standard mod-
ules for the substation. The design process would mean
connecting the modules together and minimally config-
uring each standard module. As information is contained
and transmitted in communication packets rather than in
discrete wires among equipment and IEDs, deduction of
installation expense in the process bus is realized because
of the decreased field wiring and the lower number of ter-
minations of field wiring.
Because there will be fewer cables in the process bus
architecture, the substation can be smaller. Instead of many
copper cables among the control house and the primary
equipment, the same functions can be accomplished over a
single fiber-optic cable. This will allow the cable trench of the
substation to shrink. Because the IEDs will not be required
to house space-to-land analog and digital inputs and outputs,
the IED itself will be smaller, which will translate into a
smaller control house with fewer panels.
A requirement of the substation of the future is that the
substation design be flexible and adaptable. Process bus
allows designers to add bays or lines to the substation very
quickly because the design will consist of adding a substa-
tion module and modifying the configuration rather than
redesigning the substation. During construction, the outage
time to install new equipment will be reduced because the
work performed during the outage will be to install and save
the new configuration to the centralized protection unit.
Examples of Digitally Enabled
Substation Applications
Substations of the future will enable new use cases by pro-
viding critical data as well as a platform for new decentral-
ized applications. New use cases are required by the higher
penetration of new DERs, the aging of the existing grid
assets, and the application-driven workforce. Every one of
the applications described here will be delivered as a soft-
ware service into a substation edge device.
Asset Lifecycle Management
Helping to manage the lifecycle of the grid’s assets will
continue to be an important role of the substation of the
future. Part of this strategy is APM, which integrates and
analyzes all data from the power system with the goal
of improving equipment reliability and availability, com- A Wide-Area Measurement System
bining the concepts of condition monitoring, predictive The substation of the future will provide critical data to
analysis, and reliability-centered maintenance. APM data increase the use and usefulness of data from a larger deploy-
from breakers, transformers, batteries, and other key grid ment of PMUs and micro-PMUs across the grid. The system
elements typically exist only in the sensor, a spreadsheet, will include secure access and phasor data management in
or a locked file cabinet and have not been integrated with substations and provide new tools for automation, operators,
the APM system. Substation cybersecurity systems must and engineers (see Figure 6). These data will improve applica-
access the remote data in the sensor to be provided to APM tions for enhanced system disturbance management, includ-
systems and asset managers. In addition to secure remote ing the following:
access, the substation of the future will also include data
management and modeling with health and risk analytics.
Figure 4 shows the role of sensor-data collection to help Criticality Failure
with asset strategy. For the substation of the future, the Modes Damage
physics-based asset models, the logic-based calculation Mechanisms Strategy Optimize Plan
engine, and the multivariable pattern-recognition model
can be loaded into the substation edge device.
Change Strategy Operations and
New Analytics Risk
(Interval) Maintenance
A new set of system analytics incorporating artificial intel- Drive Work
ligence and machine learning will be connected to the sub­ (Repair)
station of the future. These capabilities provide predictive Analytics
Reevaluate Connect/Collect
and prescriptive analytics to deliver multiple use cases. Risk and Action
– Sensor Data/
One of these use cases is storm response analytics, as seen Alerts/Events
in Figure 5, to predict the impacts on the grid and recom- – Inspection Data/
mend responses to forecasted storms. The goal is to reduce Alerts/History Events
resource staging safety risks and deployment timing costs,
ultimately reducing outage durations because of storms. figure 4. An intelligent asset strategy.

figure 5. A storm response analytic.

july/august 2019 ieee power & energy magazine 53

 figure 6. An event analysis using PMU data.
✔✔ near-real-time stability monitoring
✔✔ subsynchronous oscillations and active dampening
✔✔ advanced islanding resynchronization and black start
✔✔ short circuit capacity
✔✔ system disturbance monitoring
✔ ✔ fast voltage stability assessment for transmission
corridors.
A DER Management System
The future grid will have a high penetration of DERs, and
substations will have a critical role in managing them. Valu-
able DER data, control, and optimization will be part of future
substations, especially for utility-grade resources. DER data
from substations will play an important role in visualizing and
planning DER deployment: understanding, managing, and
planning an increasingly complex DER portfolio; calculating
DER capacities; and understanding what mitigation steps need
to be implemented, often in the substation, to reduce nega-
tive impacts involving voltage stability, grid capacity, reverse
power flow, unintentional islanding, and more.
Substations of the future will likely consist of some func-
tionality to optimize and control DERs. This will include the
ability to supply critical data for real-time analysis and con-
trol algorithms. The substation, through a DER management
system running as an application (see Figure 7), will provide
input to market operators and market players to understand
constraints and capacities of the grid to accommodate DER
functionality, ancillary services, and market contribution.
Summary
There are great benefits to making substation control sys-
tems fully digital, including reduced design and construction
costs, more efficient use of engineering and technician time,
and lower maintenance costs. However, as shown in the
54 ieee power & energy magazine july/august 2019
example applications, the greatest value is the ability to adapt
to new operating requirements in a timely and reliable man-
ner. In the future, the substation will be the key control point
and interface that manages the impact of new resources and
new operators. With a digitally enabled substation, it will be
possible to quickly roll out new applications, such as APM to
maximize the usage of physical assets, artificial intelligence
and machine learning to help analyze and respond to system
events, wide-area monitoring to provide situational intelli-
gence for both the transmission and the distribution system,
and DER management to integrate the resources that will
make the grid stronger and more resilient.
Another advantage of the digitally enabled substation is
that it will increase efficiency and reduce nonvalue added
activities. The biggest gain in productivity is in the much
lower number of trips to substations for configuring, main-
taining, testing, and troubleshooting devices. System moni-
toring, for example, APM means monitoring as opposed
to testing. Rolling out a new application, such as advanced
islanding, is simply sending the application software to the
substation edge device via communications. The configura-
tion of a DER management system can be done remotely by
connecting to and automatically configuring control devices.
The focus will move toward how to operate the power sys-
tem more effectively and away from how to configure, main-
tain, test, and update devices and systems.
There are some considerations regarding the implemen-
tation of a digitally enabled substation. The substation edge
device and the digital substation must be designed with cyber-
security in mind. This requires capabilities, including secure
firmware in the substation edge device, signed applications,
authentication of application sources, and the ability to roll the
substation edge device back to a known safe state. There are
also two types of interoperability to consider: 1) the ability of
figure 7. A DER management functionality screen example.
substation edge and process bus devices from different suppli-
ers to communicate with each other and 2) the ability to run the
same application in different models of substation edge devices.
Interoperability among devices can be met by using indus-
try standard communications, such as IEC 61850 and the
Open Field Message Bus, to interface and share data. This
interoperability of communications is important, as NERC
standards require the use of redundant protection schemes
for transmission systems. Redundant substation edge devices,
each acquiring the same data, will be necessary. Compatibility
is the power of an application to run on any substation edge
device from any supplier. This may be challenging. As with
the smartphone ecosystem of today, application developers
may need to develop different versions tuned to run on differ-
ent container-based operating systems.
The substation of the future is starting today. Many utili-
ties are taking the first steps toward a digital substation by
adopting process bus with today’s independent device archi-
tecture. Expect a continuing evolution of process bus design
and devices as utilities and suppliers develop best practices.
True substation edge devices with containerized applications
are becoming available, beginning with applications such as
APM. More applications will be developed to meet new oper-
ating scenarios, and the real-time operating systems neces-
sary to support protection functions will also be added. The
best part of the substation of the future is that third-party com-
panies, including utilities themselves, will develop new appli-
cations to improve power system operations to run in substa-
tion edge devices and energy management systems.
For Further Reading
San Diego Gas & Electric, “Monitoring, communication
and control infrastructure for power system moderniza-
july/august 2019 ieee power & energy magazine 55
tion,” Dec. 31, 2017. [Online]. Available: https://www.sdge
.com/sites/default/files/EPIC-2%20Project%203_Final%20
Report.pdf
D. Tholomier and D. Chatrefou, “IEC 61850 process
bus—It is real!” PAC World, 2008. [Online]. Available:
https://www.pacw.org/issue/winter_2008_issue/protection_
iec_61850/iec_61850_process_bus_it_is_real/complete_
article/1.html
D. Stewart, A. Rose, and R. Hunt, “Using digital instru-
ment transformers to reduce substation design costs,” PAC
World, Mar. 2018. [Online]. Available: https://www.pacw
.org/issue/march_2018_issue/reducing_substation_design_
costs/tackling_the_challenges_of_hybrid_transmission_
line_new_methodologies/complete_article/1.html
R. Hunt, “Manufactured protection and control: A modular
approach to installing protection and control,” in Proc. 2014
67th Annu. Conf. Protective Relay Engineers, pp. 743–769.
D. Ball and J. Byerly, “Fiber: From the whiteboard to the
station yard,” PAC World, Mar. 2017. [Online]. Available:
https://www.pacw.org/issue/march_2017_issue/fiber_and_
process_bus/fiber_from_the_whiteboard_to_the_station_
yard/complete_article/1.html
Ercot, “DER management systems overview,” Sept. 2014.
[Online]. Available: http://www.ercot.com/content/meetings/
etwg/keydocs/2014/0924/3_GTM_DERMS_Overview_-_
ERCOT_working_group_-_Sept_24.pdf
Biographies
Rich Hunt is with GE Renewable Energy, Apex, North ­Carolina.
Byron Flynn is with GE Renewable Energy, Boise, Idaho.
Terry Smith is with GE Renewable Energy, Chattanooga,
Tennessee.
p&e