Digital Substation is an engineering publication focused on IEC 61850 automation, protection systems, and digital grid intelligence.
CIGRE's first dedicated framework for virtualised IEDs will not publish until Q1 2028 — but the vPAC pilots that have to align to it are being commissioned now. Its scope is already public, through the working group's Terms of Reference and a framework article refeatured in ELECTRA 345 (April 2026): what is mandatory, what is deliberately out of scope, and what every 2026 vPAC pilot should already be doing in response.
Siemens announced SIPROTEC V at DISTRIBUTECH 2026 — a software-defined protection and control system consolidating up to 60 hardware IEDs on a single server. We look at what changes for substation engineers, and what Siemens has not yet disclosed.
In Electric Power Networks of Russia-2014 exhibition MOXA presented DA-820 industrial computer which supports PRP and HSR redundancy protocols. Now process control systems manufacturers and suppliers can use this platform to offer workstations for integration in IEC 61850 station bus networks without redundancy boxes.