Ensaios em Sistemas Virtuais de Proteção, Automação e Controle: Desafios, Testes e Confiabilidade

During SNTPEE 2025, engineer Paulo Sérgio Pereira Júnior, from Conprove, presented the conclusion of the technical paper “Tests in Virtual Protection, Automation and Control Systems”, highlighting the challenges, test methodologies, and performance requirements of virtualized protection systems. The study addresses the main challenges of virtualization — interoperability, performance, scalability, and security — and how these factors impact the classic requirements of protection systems: selectivity, speed, simplicity, reliability, and economy. 🔧 Test approaches using both physical and virtual test kits were discussed, highlighting that: • The physical test kit is essential for testing the entire protection chain, allowing analog injection at primary and secondary levels, as well as evaluating the protection algorithm. • The virtual test kit, in turn, simulates test conditions within a virtualized environment, reproducing the system behavior and interacting with virtual relays (vIEDs) in real time. 💻 The article also explores the use of virtualized network architectures, with virtual switches, traffic isolation, access control, and intelligent bandwidth management, ensuring stable and reliable communication during testing. 📁 In terms of diagnostics, the work highlights the use of COMTRADE files (for analog events) and PCAP (for IEC 61850 network traffic) as complementary tools for analyzing and reproducing real events, allowing simulation, replay, and validation of faults in digital environments. ⚙️ The project also reinforces the importance of considering, already in the network engineering phase, the additional bandwidth for simulated tests (Sampled Values ​​and GOOSE), avoiding packet loss and ensuring the integrity of critical communications. In conclusion, Paulo Junior highlighted that virtualization brings direct benefits such as security, reliability, and embedded intelligence, but requires planning, training, and appropriate testing tools to keep up with the technological evolution of digital substations and modern protection systems. 🔗 Learn more about Conprove's solutions for testing and diagnosing digital systems: https://conprove.com/todos-produtos/ https://conprove.com/produto/02-0-ce-... https://conprove.com/produto/03-0-ce-... iec-61850/ https://conprove.com/produto/05-ce-70... https://conprove.com/produto/07-ctc-c... https://conprove.com/produto/07-netwo...