The SCALE project aims to develop a highly innovative solution for the control, management and monitoring of MV networks, with greater flexibility, reliability, security and autonomy, based on a centralised solution for the protection, automation and control of HV/MV digital substations of the future.

This new approach presents a disruptive alternative for the development of digital substations, compared to the PAC products and solutions currently applied in the industry, enabling what will certainly be the substation of the future.

The SCALE project thus presents seven specific goals:

1. Develop and demonstrate a centralised protection, automation and control infrastructure, supported on a generic hardware platform and virtualisation solutions. The solution will integrate management software for multiple virtual IEDs, with the aim of replacing secondary equipment in substations in a Smart Grid context;
2. To design a new merging unit type product, including sensing and actuation at the process level, following a low-cost approach, and able to provide optimised advanced communications based on IEC 61850 standards;
3. To develop components integrated with the infrastructure software, and to define test methodologies that make possible to guarantee, within this same centralised infrastructure, the security of access, data and communications;
4. Develop advanced functionalities for advanced and distributed protection and automation of the MV network that contribute to the active and secure management of the grid in scenarios of high integration of renewable resources. The proposed functionalities will allow reducing the service restoration time as well as the customers affected by service interruptions;
5. Specify appropriate methods for testing and commissioning of the proposed centralized solution;
6. Validate and demonstrate, in an advanced simulation environment and in a real network, a set of new approaches to the protection of primary assets in substations, supported by the CPC (Centralized Protection and Control) infrastructure, namely in adaptive and self-healing applications;
7. To evaluate the impact, technically and economically, of the project implementation and the results achieved in the sector, materialising a first industrial pilot solution.

The SCALE project aims the development of a platform for digital distribution substation that allows the control, monitoring and protection of medium voltage (MV) energy grid in a centralised approach. This solution challenges not only current digital substation architectures, based on optical communications, but also other key issues, such as cloud-based infrastructures and solutions, big data and data privacy. The solution to be developed will therefore consist of an innovative architecture with a high added value compared to the current systems available.