A subsidiary of the EDF group, RTE is responsible for the management of the French electricity transmission network.
A public service company, its mission is to operate, maintain and develop France’s high and very high voltage network. With 106,000 km of lines, including 50 cross-border lines, the network managed by RTE is the largest in Europe. In its role as guarantor of the smooth operation and electrical safety of this infrastructure, RTE is responsible for the routing of electricity between (French and European) suppliers and consumers.
The project
Work Package 4 of the R#SPACE project is the new distributed control system for electrical substations.
Being developed with the support of the French National Center for Network Expertise (Centre National d’Expertise du Réseau – CNER), it has been designed as a concept that represents a genuine breakthrough compared to existing control systems.
This new system is founded on the following principles:
- A standardized and interoperable digital architecture, based on the IEC 61850 standard
- Agile short-cycle operation allows a move towards a more systemic vision
- Enhanced industrial control of solutions by RTE
- Integration of substation PLCs developed by RTE
- Increase in functional scope with the gradual integration of new features.
An initial phase will focus on a small number of sites, before gradually being ramped up to cover several hundred sites.
The solution
RTE has selected the Panorama SCADA platform.
The 4 key points of this solution are:
- SCADA designed for infrastructures such as electricity transmission networks and widely adopted in the energy
- A solution that is independent, open, upgradeable and capable of providing the means of creating new features
- A software platform that is capable of meeting the security requirements of a critical system, whilst guaranteeing flexibility with regard to accessibility by its users
- Native integration with the IEC 61850 standard enabling RTE to be independent and self-sufficient in terms of advanced configuration.
