From Digital to Virtual: The Future of Substation Automation

As the power grid evolves to accommodate increasing Distributed Energy Resources (DERs), electric utilities are transitioning from traditional digital substations to fully virtualized environments. This shift promises greater flexibility, scalability, and cost-efficiency in managing substation automation systems.

This presentation explores the role of virtualization as a key enabler of the future grid, introducing the concept of the Virtual Protection and Automation Controller (vPAC) and its application in virtual substations. Attendees will learn how virtualization decouples hardware from software, enabling faster deployment, simplified maintenance, and improved fault tolerance. The discussion will cover the architecture and components of a virtual substation, including virtual IEDs, process bus interfaces, and high-availability compute platforms.