The Australian Power Industry is experiencing an increase in the portfolio of substation projects to be delivered, which is driving an increase in spending and strain on resources in utility companies. One of the key factors to this is the rapid adoption of renewable distributed energy generators connecting to the network to meet renewable energy targets. To ensure the industry can effectively deliver the large portfolio of work required to transform the grid, the efficient delivery of future-proof substation upgrades is more important than ever.
One of the keys to efficiently delivering future-proof substations modifications is a protection and control system that is both scalable and flexible. The traditional protection and control systems typically utilised throughout the industry has a level of rigidity that is typically costly and timeconsuming to expand or modify to meet the network’s changing requirements.
I believe that the Australian Power Industry would benefit from learning about new and innovative protection and control technologies that can make these systems more flexible and scalable. I consider Centralised/Virtualised Protection and Control (CPC/VPC) to be one of the most promising technological developments in this space with the potential to create significant value to the entire Power Industry.
This report provides an overview of the first quarter of my ES Cornwall Memorial Scholarship Experience. I began my first placement in June 2025 with ABB’s Distribution Solutions Division based in Vaasa, Finland. In this report, I will focus on sharing my learnings regarding the technical fundamentals and the potential benefits of CPC/VPC systems, along with an overview of the projects that are being conducted by international utilities to test, trial and implement this technology
A full version of this report can be found here.