Power infrastructure resilience

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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.

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.

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.