The core objective of the ProDig project is to develop and disseminate the knowledge required to securely utilize digital substations in the future power system. The secondary objectives are to:

• Facilitate large-scale integration of inverter-interfaced renewables and ensure reliable and secure protection following faults or transient disturbances.
• Assess and implement secure inter-substation communication based on IEC61850, study management and orchestration challenges for wide-area applications and identify the potential of 5G.
• Establish better methods and advanced strategies for fault location and handling  in complex situations for minimum interruption of power supply.
• Test and analyze new sensor technologies including non-conventional instrument transformers to quantify interoperability of existing and new technologies as well as improve selectivity and sensitivity of protection and fault location.
• Establish test procedures for fast upgrade of digital sub-stations to utilize plug&play capabilities of IEDs. It is a goal to reduce outage times by a factor 10.
• Develop and utilize the test platform for digital protective devices (including time synchronization) connected to process and station bus in NTNU’s laboratory. Online access to laboratories at NTNU and MTU will utilize complementary capabilities and allow development of remote test procedures in a true multi-vendor environment.
• Educate a nucleus of PhD scholars (4) and MSc Students (16), and initiate key online courses with remotely accessible laboratory resources, providing the workforce with key competencies. Papers, reports and procedures will be made available.