Enabling Digital Substations Through Substation Standardization

Abstract

Substation Standardization is a collaborative process between the end-user and the equipment/tech suppliers to templatize the design, to estimate cost, and to service an end-to-end electrical solution optimized for specific types of assets. Substation standardization helps owner-operators simplify the electrification part of projects and reduce project costs by enabling supplier pre-selection early in a project, thus leveraging the supplier’s product expertise to achieve the project goals. The standardization approach also helps end-users ensure consistency in design, minimize cost, and optimize performance levels of electrical assets across multiple vendors and in various asset classes and projects. Plant power requirements are determined mainly by the demands of process equipment. To minimize the downtime, maintaining top operational performance and electrical assets’ reliability are the key considerations in substation standardization. Substation standardization is an opportunity and catalyst for digital transformation; to develop digital substations in a consistent and repeatable manner and enable aggregation of data without interfering with operational control. Thus, enabling digital technologies in electrical substations, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, can improve safety and uptime while reducing the cost of operations and maintenance. By incorporating Substation digitization as a vital element of the substation standardization framework, end-users create a seamless end-to-end solution tailor-made to their organizational needs by bringing together an ecosystem of equipment vendors, engineering partners, and digital solutions or services providers in a consistent approach.