Retrofitting Legacy Substation Monitoring Infrastructure to an Advanced Distribution Management System Employing Middleware: A Case Study

With the increasing adoption of Advanced Distribution Management Systems (ADMS) in modern power grids, there is an increasing need to seamlessly integrate existing sensors and measurement devices into these systems. Due to compatibility issues and the cost of replacing entire sensor networks, retrofitting legacy infrastructure with new technologies can be a difficult task. The use of middleware as a viable solution for integrating legacy sensors and measurement devices into ADMS, enabling efficient data acquisition and real-time monitoring, is proposed in this paper. Distribution System Operators (DSOs) can efficiently upgrade their monitoring infrastructure, reduce the costs of a complete hardware overhaul, and maximize the potential of ADMS functionalities by leveraging middleware solutions. This method was used in the case study of retrofitting an existing substation monitoring system in the distribution grid managed by the Italian DSO Unareti, which operates in northern Italy. The legacy monitoring infrastructure uses proprietary communication protocols that are incompatible with the ADMS. The middleware layer solves this problem by allowing data from the substation monitoring system to be collected and analyzed by the ADMS. However, the middleware solution is impractical for critical monitoring systems that require real-time and low-latency data exchange. Depending on the characteristics of the legacy system, the middleware layer may introduce data exchange latency that, in the case of the considered case study, up to 15 minutes in the worst case.