IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - July/August 2019 - 108

in my view

Ramy Azar

substations
transformations and improvements

S

SUBSTATIONS HAVE TRADITION-
ally been treated like supporting actors
in the electricity sector. But they are
critical for integrating resources, serv-
ing the customer load, transforming
voltages, supporting situational aware-
ness, and providing system protection.
Substations that use new technologies
exhibit greater efficiency, reliability,
and safety. Advances such as in artifi-
cial intelligence (AI) enable the inte-
gration of digital platforms, distributed
energy resources (DERs), and efficient
energy-management systems, with the
potential to upend the traditional class
of electricity-transmission assets. In the
future, the electrical grid will ask sub-
stations to provide many more services
than ever before, and they will become
central rather than on the sidelines.
This changed role of substations has
been years in the making due to exter-
nal and internal factors in the electric
power industry.
In an industry that historically took
decades to evolve, substations are under-
going a rapid transformation. Micropro-
cessor-based protection systems have
replaced the older electromechanical
relays, and copper wires used for com-
munication have been replaced with
fiber optic connections. Supervisory
control and data-acquisition systems
have been implemented with the lat-
est digital equipment and technology.
Open-air insulated equipment has been
replaced with gas insulated switchgear,
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPE.2019.2910423
Date of publication: 18 June 2019

108

ieee power & energy magazine

and much more. These changes have
moved substations to the forefront of
the industry.

Backbone of
Economic Growth
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
states, "The electric power industry is
the backbone of America's economic
sectors, generating the energy that em-
powers its people and businesses in
global commerce" (United States Electricity Industry Primer, https://www
.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/12/
f28/united-states-electricity-industry-
primer.pdf). The electric grid has key
interdependencies with all critical sec-
tors and essential resources. The same
points are recognized worldwide; most
countries acknowledge that electricity,
increasingly from clean resources, can
enable their citizens to become more
productive and competitive in the glob-
al environment.
The adverse effects of an electric-
ity shortage cannot be understated, as
is directly observable from recent ex-
tended blackouts. For example, in 2019,
a blackout in Venezuela shut down the
oil production and exports the country
depends on for its basic needs. Energy
poverty has been recognized as the
most critical deficit that hampers eco-
nomic growth and productivity. How-
ever, by reducing or eliminating energy
insufficiency, other factors that lead to
poverty can be readily addressed by
various initiatives around the globe,
including the terrific IEEE Smart Vil-
lage. Substations, both small and large,

now play a central role, not only by en-
abling energy distribution but also by
orchestrating the energy flow from dis-
tributed resources, storage devices, and
demand response.

Processing Power
Improvements
The first practical and commercially
available microprocessor-based relay
was made in the 1980s. Wider adop-
tion of these relays did not occur until
the late 1990s, once they were proven
sufficiently reliable to implement in the
electric grid. Subsequently, almost all
electromechanical relays in the industry
have been replaced with microproces-
sor-based ones, which has prepared the
substations for their next evolutionary
stage. Data are now collected, stored,
and shared digitally for system protec-
tion and control and for several automa-
tion functions. The data availability and
rapid increase in processing power have
also led to the creation of platform-
based control functions for substations
that use IEC 61850 standards and pro-
gramming languages that are easy to
understand and use. Implementing the
IEC 61850 process bus standard in a
substation replaces almost all copper
control cables with fiber optic ones.
This implementation also enables easier
integration of distributed and intermit-
tent power-generation resources, lead-
ing to substations that act as the new
nodal hub of grid operations.

(continued on p. 104)
july/august 2019
https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/12/f28/united-states-electricity-industry-primer.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/12/f28/united-states-electricity-industry-primer.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/12/f28/united-states-electricity-industry-primer.pdf
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