Kalkitech with the support of Intel Corporation has opened an Advanced Grid Automation Technology Lab at Campbell, California. The laboratory is a physical and virtual space where companies in the grid automation community can integrate, evaluate, and promote the use of advanced computing technologies in the substation for modernizing protection, automation, and control (PAC).
The modernization of PAC systems has been gaining traction in the power utility and vendor communities to address the needs of the changing grid.ย Virtualization and centralization of protection relays, VPR, is a challenging problem and will be the first focus of the lab.
The managed lab environment is accessible to Utilities, hardware suppliers, software suppliers, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and system integrators (SIs). This supplier-agnostic lab facilitates the stakeholders to deploy, verify and validate VPR PoCs and Pilots and can give a level of transparency to the market in demonstrating the strengths of each VPR concept and design.
The lab currently features vital digital substation components to simulate and run VPR applications that are deployed in multiple virtual machines in a single hardware box based on Intelยฎ Xeonยฎ Scalable Processor family. The lab facilitates IEC 61850 Digital Substation functionality of publishing of sampled value streams, publish and subscribe GOOSE messages. The lab is equipped with Protection & Control testing tools, Substation Network Analyzer to record and analyze voltages, current, binary signals, and messages. All the computers, devices and measurement equipment in the laboratory are time synchronized to a PTP grandmaster clock.
Reliable and efficient communication networks are of paramount importance in modern day smart grids. Knowing this fact, the lab also includes industry standards Layer 2 switch with 10 Gbit/s uplinks capability. The HSR/PRP support of the VPR server enables the VPR applications to be assessed in a redundant network environment.
The results obtained from the lab can provide early indications on bottlenecks, potential risks and integration issues. This enables stake holders to derive an optimum VPR architecture and value proposition of virtualizing time-sensitive workloads on Intelยฎ Architecture.
Kalkitech provide access to the lab facility for the interested market participants to test and validate their VPR solutions. Interested hardware, software, and integration companies can review the baseline lab setup, donate devices or software to extend the baseline setup and be featured in the lab, or create projects where their technologies can be evaluated in closed collaboration with Kalkitech. The lab provides value added services on performance benchmarking and technical assistance on migrating to virtualized platforms.
