It took place on March 29th, in Lisbon, organized by EFACEC, a session to present the DSGrid and ADMS4LV projects, in which this company was one of the partners. Both are applied research projects subsidised by the Portugal 2020 funds.

The first, DSGrid (Digital Systems Technology for Next Generation Grid), had the goal to develop equipment and applications for the protection, automation and control (PAC) systems of substations of the transmission and distribution networks.

Since the 'Substation of the Future' project and its continuation 'Smart Substation testing and Implementation' project, under development at R&D Nester, involving REN and CEPRI, are also an initiative in the area of PAC systems, EFACEC, a partner in these projects, invited the development team to make a presentation on the theme 'The vision of the substation of the future'.

It was up to Ricardo Cartaxo, an R&D Nester researcher, to make this presentation, describing the various options taken in the project, in order to meet the vision for the substation of the future, achieved by the team in the first year of development, through the survey to several stakeholders.

For example, one of the options taken was the merging of control and automation system with the protection system, into a unique PAC system, with all functions having redundancy, which previously only happened in the protection system.

Ricardo also highlighted the new way the interlocking function is implemented, using rules instead of Boolean equations. This new approach avoids the need to develop new equations for a new substation or bay topology, which reduces the probability of error in the implementation of this function.

This researcher concluded his presentation by referring some possible future developments in PAC systems, not considered in this project: drones in substations, cloud computing (for protection algorithms), interchangeability (possibility to change one device by a different one, without loss of functionalities) and primary devices (circuit breakers, disconnectors, transformers) with communication interface to the PAC system.

For more information about the DSGrid project: http://www.dsgrid-project.efacec.com