Smart substation for the French power grid

The paper describes a smart substation project launched two years ago, as part of the French government's plan “investments for the future”. This project is named “Poste Intelligent” within RTE (Smart Substation, in English), and aims to test in real conditions the latest technological developments for both primary and secondary equipment using the second edition of the IEC 61850 standard and new information and communication technologies in a fully interoperable solution. For the first time in France, the substation is designed like an autonomous entity, with adaptive solutions using horizontal inter-substation communications, in addition to the traditional hierarchical concept of “substation to SCADA”.