Digital Substation

Austria’s electricity mix is dominated by renewables. Today, around 80% of all electricity already comes from green energy, and the goal is to cover 100% of total electricity consumption (national energy balance) from renewables by 2030. As a result, the power grid is becoming increasingly complex and will have to keep evolving in order to handle the added complexity in combination with growing energy consumption. In addition to conventional grid expansion, which Austria is carrying out at full speed, additional innovative solutions are needed to enable fast, reliable decision making in this dynamic environment as well as real-time implementation of the necessary measures. Using digital infrastructure solutions at our substations will play a key role in this context. 

The main objective of our Digital Substation project is to gain additional status information about the equipment installed in our substations and to use this data in new business cases. Sensors and modern communication protocols make it possible to gather more information than ever before about the actual status of equipment. Sensors are placed on transformers (the most operationally relevant substation components) and also in cable terminations, circuit breakers, disconnectors and instrument transformers to create a comprehensive digital image of the substation (digital twin). This enables early detection of critical conditions (e.g. of transformers), avoidance of costly outages and optimum utilisation of equipment. This data can then be used as the basis for predictive maintenance. With this project, we are ensuring that our existing energy infrastructure can be used as efficiently as possible.