With more renewables being integrated, the grid now has to act more like a multilane, two-way highway than the one-way street of the past. Meanwhile, global electricity consumption continues to grow with a projected 3.3% increase in 2025 and 3.7% in 2026, according the International Energy Agency1 (IEA). Add in aging infrastructure and extreme weather and the challenge of reliable grid operation gets even bigger.
The good news: technologies are available today to help increase resilience in delivering safe, reliable electricity from source to socket.
Smarter operations starting at the substation
As the power grid evolves, substation technology also needs to adapt to support performance, flexibility and scale.
ABB’s centralized protection and control offering (SSC600) (1) makes managing protection and control functionality in electrical substations easier. Instead of using multiple devices, A centralized protection and control (CPC) approach brings station-wide visibility into one device to optimize process management, and reduce complexity and cost associated with maintaining multiple devices. CPC is also available as stand-alone software (SSC600 SW) that can be installed on the customer’s hardware of choice.
Our scalable SCADA (ABB zenon ZEE600) (2) pairs with CPC hardware to support substation automation and renewable integration. Utilities can control switching, safety and flow. This can support quicker recovery in the event of an issue. Wide and secure data connectivity ensures fast decision making. ABB recently delivered this SCADA-based control system to Greenlane Infrastructure’s new EV freight charging station. It’s being used to coordinate all electrical loads — from chargers to switchgear — to stay within utility thresholds and avoid blackouts.
Reliable distribution in all conditions
From increased demand and heatwaves to extreme weather events like hurricanes and flooding, the grid is challenged to maintain operations every day, in all conditions and restore power quickly if an outage occurs. ABB Elastimold® medium-voltage switchgear (3) plays a critical role in reliably distributing power to where it’s needed.
This switchgear is optimized for underground installation to minimize damage during extreme weather events, enabling utilities to restore service more quickly and efficiently. Components are sealed, submersible and protected to help eliminate ingress, animal intruders, corrosion or condensation inside the enclosure. ABB rigorously tests products for safety and performance to help keep families and communities connected when it matters most.
Balancing increasing demand
As electricity demand and renewable integration increase, a major challenge is balancing supply and demand. This is where battery energy storage systems (BESS) come in to store excess energy from solar or wind generation to use it later. With ABB’s BESS-as-a-Service (4), stored energy can be used to reduce reliance on grid power – shaving off peak demand, reducing energy costs and offering an alternative to fuel generators for backup power in the event of a grid failure.
BESS-as-a-Service also removes the need for upfront capital investment, enabling companies to adopt battery storage as a fully managed service, complete with performance guarantees and energy trading support.
Maintaining uptime on site
For power grid companies as well as industrial sites, operational reliability and uptime are paramount. ABB’s SMISSLINE TP (5), the world’s first plug-in socket system, delivers on both fronts – enhancing system resilience and flexibility. This pioneering solution allows maintenance and expansions to be carried out without disrupting the power flow, ensuring an uninterrupted and reliable energy supply. It’s why Kalmar Energi, a leading Swedish energy company, turned to this solution when modernizing switchgear and control cabinets for its power plant.
Source:
1. Electricity demand growth: Electricity - Energy System - IEA
