IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - July/August 2019 - 16

guest editorial

Girish Behal

substation innovations
the heart and brain of the grid

SUBSTATION MODERNIZATION
remains a critical element of state-ofthe-art electric power systems. The rapidly evolving nature of the grid, customer
demands, and technological innovation
puts substations at the forefront of grid
transformation. Substation developments
include the application of equipment
tests, sustainable practices, digitization,
and advanced solutions for a host of
system needs, along with reactive power
compensation and long-distance renewable integration of renewable energy
sources. Substations must increasingly
act not only in the interest of the larger
grid but also in support of decision making at the local level. They are expected
to serve as data-gathering locations that
can optimize future investments leading
to the implementation of new technologies. To achieve public acceptability, substations should be fully functional and
either invisible or aesthetically appealing,
especially in highly populated areas. Sustainability is another aspect where substations are seeing innovation, such as in replacing sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) gas, a
greenhouse gas, with other gasses used in
compact gas-insulated substations (GISs).
As Ramy Azar writes in his "In My
View" column, substations are becoming the heart and the brain of the electric
grid. The pace of innovation in substation
design is accelerating quite significantly,
and we should not be surprised if we see
self-healing substations managed by artificial intelligence (AI) in the near future.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPE.2019.2910425
Date of publication: 18 June 2019

ieee power & energy magazine

With the substation of the future in
mind, we invited authors from across
the globe to share their experiences and
expertise regarding technologies being
implemented in their regions. It should
not come as a surprise that advancements
in substation technologies play a key
role in the next evolution of the grid.
Our first article, by Heejin Kim, JaeKyeong Kim, Jiyoung Song, Jaegul Lee,
Kisun Han, Jeonghoon Shin, Taekyun
Kim, and Kyeon Hur discusses sustained
R&D solutions that create more sustainable and smart substations throughout the
Republic of Korea. The benefits of these
efforts include reduced adverse environmental impacts of substations, while, at
the same time, implementing cuttingedge technological innovations continuously improves the performance of existing and new assets. The authors start
with a brief description of the growth
history of the electric transmission and
distribution system on the Korean Peninsula. They examine the adaptation and
implementation of the IEC 61850 standard in substations. Kim et al. share the
additional research being done for the
development of AI algorithms to be used
for automatic restoration of equipment.
They then describe the establishment of
advanced data collection infrastructure
and how it is expected to lead to more reliable service for the end customers. With
a significant push to integrate renewable
resources in Korea, the authors review a
standard modularized green substation
that is easily deployed and also uses inert
gases for insulation rather than SF6. As
mentioned in the article, deploying a stan-

dardized modularized substation, which
may also include flexible ac transmission
system (FACTS) devices, could significantly promote the successful integration
of distributed energy resources (DERs)
and microgrids.
In the second article, George Zhou,
David Wang, Adham Atallah, Frank
McElvain, Ram Nath, John Jontry,
Christopher Bolton, Huang Lin, and
Andreas Haselbauer survey synchronous condensers. They provide an indepth look at the significant portfolio
changes that a number of U.S. states are
facing with increased renewable portfolio standards (RPSs), which encourage
the development of carbon-free electric
energy resources. An unintended consequence of RPSs has been the closure of
some nuclear power plants earlier than
expected due to reduced revenues caused
by the addition of lower-cost variable resources. The article evaluates the effects
of the loss of kinetic energy and reactive
power supply on large power systems,
like California's, which have integrated
renewables at a large scale. The authors
explore some technical studies that were
done to evaluate system conditions, including power flow and transient analysis, and how innovative solutions can
improve system reliability.
Modeling issues and the need for
proper representation of equipment are
also evaluated, an aspect the industry
views as vitally important. Flawed models used in the initial project evaluations
were uncovered only after equipment
installations had resulted in deficient
performance, which added substantial
july/august 2019

IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - July/August 2019

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