Edge Computing in Substations

Cuerva

Cuerva is a Spanish Energy Operator founded in 1939. It started out as an electricity provider for rural areas in the province of Granada through renewable hydraulic generation. Today, it has 9 main lines of business covering the entire energy value chain, from generation, distribution, retail and customer energy services. The business has over 140 employees and operates in 3 countries: Spain, Peru and Panama.

Cuerva Distribution needed to have real-time data (<1 minute) from the line cells of its substations and fault detectors in order to obtain instant alerts regarding supply quality: surges or drops in voltages or intensity, neutral currents, etc. Traditionally, all these data are processed through SCADA, a rather rigid system which does not allow for custom events and alarms to be configured. Due to software limitations, it took around 15 minutes for the data to transfer from SCADA to a database.

Barbara’s proposed solution was based on the deployment of Edge nodes installed at the substation, consisting of:

• Barbara OS, the secure operating system for Edge nodes

• Barbara API, the communication interface between the cloud and the Edge nodes

• Barbara Panel, the dashboard for edge node control and advanced intelligence deployed on them.

With Barbara´s Edge platform, Cuerva can control the entire lifecycle of the Edge nodes and oversee the information distributed across them. This allows Cuerva to see the communications status of the nodes, customised them and update them remotely.

• [Data Management - Data Processing]
  

  The devices are managed completely remotely from the Barbara Control Panel, which minimises site visits and enables remote updates.

• [Data Management - Real Time Data]
  

  Data are obtained in real time, even faster than the pilot project targets, as quality information can be obtained with a 30-second refresh.

• [Data Management - Data Security]
  

  • The device is fully cybersecure, meeting IEC-62443-4 standards and it keeps this crucial information completely encrypted.

• Barbara solved a big problem for us. We have sensors throughout our network but they have their own language, protocols and their own interpretation, and doing it all internally would be very expensive. Barbara was able to solve the challenge of processing data and put the information where we needed it.