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Power infrastructure resilience

Standing strong against any threat

Power supply reliability is more important than ever before – on all voltage levels, from the point of grid infeed all the way to the consumer.

Discover solutions from Siemens that help establish highly resilient power systems that immediately recover from disruptive events and adapt to impending threats and dangers. 

Identifying risks, increasing reliability

A holistic approach to power infrastructure resilience

The influencing factors on modern power systems are numerous, and they are constantly changing. That’s why it takes an integrated, intelligent, and comprehensive concept to protect today’s power systems. Such a concept needs to cover the entire power system on all voltage levels and to anticipate all possible risks. A main constituent of power system protection is to implement resilience. A more resilient power infrastructure has a higher ability to withstand disruptive events, reduce their impact, and speed up recovery.

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Resilience with and despite digitalization

In the wake of digitalization, power systems have evolved from relatively self-contained, straightforward networks to complex intelligent infrastructures that are more prone to incidents of natural and human origin across multiple levels. 

 

Addressing the potential risks associated with this inescapable process as well as other developments, such as climate change, the rise of distributed power systems, and a sharp increase in cases of vandalism in some countries, necessitate that resilience be an integral part of all future power system operation, optimization, and planning.

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“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail – especially in an increasingly complex energy system.”

Michael Weinhold, CTO of Siemens Energy Management

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“When a storm comes, the oak will fall, but the reed will bend and quickly stand up again once the storm is over. We have to stop building oaks and start to build an energy system that is much more like reeds.”

Christoph Frei, Secretary General of the World Energy Council

Proactive, holistic power system protection

The resilience of a power infrastructure stands or falls with the weakest system component. It is crucial to identify all possible disruptive factors, anticipate incidents, and proactively secure the entire system. That’s why Siemens has developed a unique, holistic, three-dimensional approach.

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The physical dimension of power infrastructure resilience

The most obvious element of Siemens’ holistic resilience concept is the physical protection of power systems and their components. This includes factors such as access protection and presence detection on all premises, and bullet-resistant transformer protection systems, which can be installed on new and existing units. It also comprises protection by design against damage due to natural forces, such as high tide, floods, storms, earthquakes, lightning, and geomagnetically induced currents associated with geomagnetic storms.

 

Another integral part of improved physical resilience is condition monitoring. The associated continuous assessment of nominal and actual values makes it possible to identify wear and tear at an early stage and to intervene in advance, before disruptions become very likely.

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The digital dimension of power infrastructure resilience

Today’s power system automation requirements simply can’t be met without consistent digitalization. However, given the current development, which is characterized by increasing dynamics, flexibility, and changing roles of the various stakeholders, digitalization implies the necessity to deal with new reliability risks. 

 

Siemens, a pioneer in the field of industrial IT security for decades, has incorporated comprehensive measures and technologies for digital protection in its resilience concept – from a continuous status analysis of cyber security risks to the prevention of unauthorized access and tampering all the way to protection from human and technical error and infrastructure failures. This includes cyber security as well as secure automation and automatic fault detection based on the opportunities that artificial intelligence provides.

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The systemic dimension of power infrastructure resilience

The coordination and intelligent interaction of all power system components is the essential basis for a truly resilient power infrastructure. That’s why Siemens considers the systemic protection against internal as well as external risks in all measures – starting at the first planning phase of a power system of any size and including appropriate levels of redundancy as well as specially designed fast-response services.

 

This is made possible by Siemens’ extensive, long-standing experience in the design, maintenance, and update of power systems of any size. A comprehensive view of the big picture, mature technical expertise, and detailed knowledge of every power system component plus intensive training are key when it comes to incorporating resilience from the outset.

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Why action is needed

New challenges call for new strategies

Disruptive events in power supply infrastructures can never be completely ruled out. But a resilient power system is able to anticipate and absorb potentially disruptive events, adapt to them, and rapidly recover from an incident.

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Safety concerns any power system as a whole

Power system operators have always taken extensive measures against system faults and system failures. But there are new threats that need to be addressed.

 

The vulnerability to cyber threats, for instance, is increasing in the wake of digitalization and with the growing number of interconnections. Extreme weather conditions due to climate change have quadrupled over the past 30 years and have become a severe threat to power systems in several parts of the world. The problem of vandalism is becoming steadily worse. The number of power outages caused by vandalism has reached alarming levels in several supply areas. In view of such new challenges, resilience is increasingly required to ensure a reliable supply of power. 

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It’s a law of nature that you can’t avoid failures. The trick is to incorporate enough fault tolerance into a system and to make it learn from past failures to become even more stable. That’s the essence of resilience.

Michael Schwan, Head of Power System Consulting, Siemens PTI

The many facets of resilience

Standing strong against any threat

The numerous aspects of power infrastructure resilience have one thing in common: They are based on the ability to anticipate, react, adapt, and recover quickly thanks to fast, targeted, and effective action on the physical as well as on the digital and the systemic side.

The answer to this question is given in our animated infographics that explains the importance of a resilient power infrastructure.
What if suddenly all power was gone?

The answer to this question is given in our animated infographics that explains the importance of a resilient power infrastructure.

News and media

News, media, and events

Here’s where we provide you with updates on new developments, publications, and events in which we are participating. Check it out regularly.

Locked Shields
Article | July 2017  

Control centers: The brain of any power system

Locked Shields is the world’s largest and most advanced international network defense exercise. Siemens, a cooperation partner of the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, contributed its Spectrum Power Control technology to this year’s exercise.

 
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Press release | April 2017  

Siemens will help improve the resilience of the Saudi Arabian power grid

Two mobile, highly versatile substations including the world’s most powerful transformers ever used for a mobile substation will be delivered to Saudi Arabia. They will provide additional reliability for the country’s transmission grid.

 
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Press release | March 2017  

Siemens mobile transformers for New York

To improve the stability of New York’s power grid, Siemens and Con Edison have installed an innovative and versatile plug-and-play mobile resilience power transformer in record time.

 
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Interview | October 2016  

Bend, not break

Christoph Frei, Secretary General of the World Energy Council, calls for more resilience and energy systems that will bend rather than break in the storms to come.

 

Project references

Power infrastructure resilience put into practice

Power infrastructure resilience embraces many different physical, digital, and systemic aspects. Discover how our solutions work and interact in practice in some of our top project references.

Small power, big impact

„Small power, big impact“

Low carbon Microgrid in Indian Native reservation

Independent energy supply

No risks of blackout or power interruptions
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INELFE | France/Spain

Reliable power exchange between France and Spain

Fast control and protection functions 

Blackstart capability for rapid grid setup after failures 

Increased supply reliability and stabilization of European grids. 
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Consolidated Edison | USA

Securing the Big Apple

Smart grid integration with special software from Siemens

Real-time information

Quick decisions on load relief become possible
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Co-Op City | USA

Microgrid protects neighborhoods from power failure

Trigeneration system including a 40-MW steam turbine

Reliable operation maintained during superstorm Sandy

Upfront investment paid back after just five years
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Transpower New Zealand | New Zealand

New Zealand’s inter-island HVDC link upgrade

New pole replacing an old one built in the middle of an operating system

Earthquake-resistant valve hall that can rapidly return to full operation after a strong earthquake

Update of existing control and protection system, SCC PLUS system added
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Contact

Get in touch with the resilience experts

Power infrastructure resilience starts with the appropriate mindset, and there’s no off-the-shelf solution. But the Siemens experts will be glad to analyze your individual starting point, your objectives, and possible ways to a more resilient power system.

Get more information on resilient power systems
Contact us

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