Facilitating Net Zero through wide-area protection

The electricity network is at the heart of the UK`s journey to Net Zero. In the future, millions of consumers will depend on electricity not only to keep the lights on, but also to heat and travel. To facilitate Net Zero at the lowest possible cost to consumers, electricity network operators are employing smart solutions – like flexibility services, for example - to maximize efficiency and reliability on the distribution network. 

As more and more distributed energy resources (DER) connects to the network and, in turn, DER owners provide services back to the network – it is vital network operators have world class systems in place to manage the system holistically and efficiently. That is why we have launched the Constellation project, which will use the latest advances in 5G communication and software engineering to enhance local substations by making them more intelligent, digital and interoperable and enable secure, scalable communication between them. 

Substation computers, which host a software environment, will be installed at selected substations and DG sites with the aim to provide a flexible environment for new applications for protection and control (see Fig. 1). Protection applications running on the software environment include functions operating based on local measurements (feeder protection at the substations, DER protection at DER sites) and functions utilising inputs from multiple remote sites (communication-based wide area protection). The new aspects of the protection concept are:

  Virtualisation of protection functions: Protection applications have extremely strict real-time and reliability requirements and are, at the moment, running on dedicated hardware (such as numerical relays). 

  Communication based wide area protection utilising 5G communication: 5G slicing aims to provide secure, reliable and low latency wireless communication between sites that can be used for protection applications.