Strengthening the Power Grid with Edge Intelligence

Introduction

As Europe accelerates its transition to renewable energy, Transmission System Operators (TSOs) face a new wave of complexity. The challenge isn't just about transmitting electricity anymore, it's about integrating decentralized assets, maintaining stability, and ensuring grid intelligence in real time.

That’s where a substation virtualization and the Edge-Native Industrial Platform like Barbara come in. In a groundbreaking project with REDEIA, Spain’s national TSO, Barbara helped virtualize a critical substation tool: the oscilloscope.

Why Virtualize an Electrical Substation?

Substation virtualization creates a digital twin of the physical operation, enabling real-time monitoring, intelligent automation, and streamlined maintenance, all without dependence on specific hardware or OS environments.

Key benefits include:

• Real-Time Visibility: Operators gain a more granular and accurate view of the substation's health.
• AI-Driven Fault Detection: Integrated Machine Learning (ML) algorithms help detect and anticipate failures before they cause outages.
• Improved Security & Planning: Virtual environments support simulations, enhance cybersecurity, and improve contingency planning.
• Cost-Effective Upgrades: With software-defined infrastructure, updates and improvements can happen more frequently and efficiently than with traditional hardware upgrades.

The Role of the Virtual Oscilloscope in Substation Intelligence

An oscilloscope plays a vital role in substations, enabling operators to measure and analyze the waveform, frequency, and quality of electrical signals being transmitted in the electrical system. This real-time visibility is essential for identifying issues and ensuring the safe, reliable operation of the power system.

Barbara’s Edge Node processes and stores up to 4,000 voltage and current samples per second, along with quality indicators. It retains this data as time series, visually representing it just like a traditional oscilloscope. When a GOOSE event is triggered, the system captures and displays data from both before and after the event, giving operators a detailed view of what happened.

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With Barbara’s cybersecure VPN, this information can be accessed remotely, no need to be on-site. This not only cuts costs related to connectivity and storage but also ensures a high level of data security and operational privacy.

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High-Frequency Data Handling: The Core Challenge

One of the most complex challenges in this deployment was managing the high-frequency data streams required by containerized algorithms at the edge. Each edge node had to receive, process, and publish thousands of data points—each containing four voltage and current values, without overloading the CPU or consuming excessive disk space.

Barbara tackled this by implementing optimized data batching techniques to efficiently handle the data volume. Additionally, a GOOSE connector was integrated to precisely capture data immediately before and after critical substation events, ensuring reliable event-driven analysis without compromising system performance.

Inside Barbara’s Edge Computing Platform

To power this solution, Barbara provided a full stack of cybersecure edge infrastructure, including:

✅ Barbara OS

A lightweight, Linux-based OS built for edge devices—secure, remotely manageable, and continuously updated.

✅ Barbara Panel

A cloud-agnostic dashboard for managing applications, edge nodes, and microservices. It supports:

• OTA firmware updates
• Substation-specific protocol connectors (IEC 61850-9-2 SV, GOOSE, MMS)
• Deployment of support services like MQTT Broker, InfluxDB, and Grafana from the Barbara Marketplace

Expected Gains: Why Virtualization Pays Off

For REDEIA, the results go far beyond just digital modernization:

1. Scalability: New applications can be added without hardware changes.
2. Technological Flexibility: The microservices architecture allows easy integration of tools from multiple vendors.
3. Reduced O&M Costs: Early anomaly detection and remote control drastically reduce on-site maintenance needs

Why Barbara?

At Barbara, we believe the Digital Grid must be powered by intelligence at the edge, not just from central platforms. Real-time demands, data volumes, and cybersecurity needs require a highly distributed, autonomous IT infrastructure.

Barbara’s Edge Platform enables utilities to:
• Process and act on data in real time
• Automate decisions at the edge
• Secure operations withIEC-compliant cybersecurity
• Deploy AI and applications across distributed assets
• Scale effortlessly via remote orchestration from a centralized panel