As Australia’s electricity grid grows more complex, automation is the key to preventing costly network failures.
With the proliferation of new renewable generation and battery energy storage systems, Australia’s electricity grid is quickly outgrowing itself.
This is changing the way networks should be configured, with the diversity of original equipment manufacturers (OEM) and design methodologies adding further complexity.
“As Australia’s electricity demand increases, we’re seeing bigger batteries, solar and wind farms and more of them, meaning networks are growing massively,” Belden solutions sales manager – Australia and New Zealand Andrew Tildesley told Energy.
“Architecture that once worked on smaller networks, where there were more tolerances and you could get away with imprecise configuration, doesn’t work with the larger networks we see today.”
A large solar farm, for example, requires more inverters, network switches and DC couplers, creating more sophistication. This renders any human error during installation, commissioning and operation costly.
“With today’s solar networks larger and more complex, greater discussion on the correct design for network redundancy and resilience is needed,” Tildesley said. “The moment a switch is poorly configured, or not suitable for the application it has been chosen to perform, then it will fall over.
“And when you’re coupling a solar farm with a BESS, precise networking is essential to not only performance but also safety.”
According to Belden – a US-headquartered industrial automation and networking innovator – there are several ways to streamline today’s electricity network.
Belden sees an electricity market increasingly influenced by emerging technologies such as software-defined networking (SDN) but not the uptake capable of future-proofing the grid.
From SDN comes intent-based networking (IBN) – a fully automated approach to designing, deploying and maintaining networks. Combine IBN with IEC 61850 and utilities have access to a fully standardised, interoperable substation environment – and one that can grow with evolving electricity demands.
“Modern utility networks are undergoing a rapid transformation, driven by digitalisation and the increasing need for scalable, efficient, and resilient infrastructure,” Belden said in a whitepaper presented at CIGRE SC B5 in Osaka, Japan in July 2025.
“These advancements, while beneficial, have introduced new layers of complexity that challenge traditional networking approaches.”
While protection, automation, and control systems (PACS) embedded into today’s digital infrastructure are critical to ensuring network stability and reliability, Belden sees many field engineers constrained by outdated practices.
This includes relying on command-line interfaces (CLI) or manual scripts to configure network switches, which places a ceiling on network capacity and resilience.
“IBN and IEC 61850 together offer a promising pathway to address these challenges,” Belden said. “While IBN introduces a paradigm shift in network management by automating configurations based on high-level intents, IEC 61850 provides a robust standard for substation automation and interoperability.”
Tildesley said adopting IBN whilst following IEC 61850 standards is critical to ensuring the stability of not just one substation but the entire network.
“Networks don’t respond well to inconsistent current and voltage levels,” he said. “Those fluctuations can trip switches offline and potentially disrupt the entire network.
“With IEC 61850, continuous communication helps detect conflicts quickly so the impacted substation can be isolated – preventing a broader network outage.”
Critical information moves faster and more reliably when it doesn’t have to contend with congestion or large data payloads.
This is where automation can be an enabler.
“In substation architecture, many devices are talking to each other on different layers of the network,” Tildesley said. “No matter what IED (intelligent electronic device) or voltage transformer is being used, implementing IBN helps automate the network configuration process.
“The combined IBN and IEC 61850 solution is vendor-agnostic and compatible with existing (including legacy) switches, enabling seamless interoperability without the need for a dedicated SDN controller. This flexibility makes adopting IBN and IEC 61850 both accessible and cost-effective, offering a practical way to future-proof network management across diverse utility environments.”
Tildesley said he’d like to see more utilities adopting processes such as IBN to future-proof their substations, recognising there’s a stigma related to system risks.
“Many utilities don’t want to be the first to implement new ideas and processes like this, because if things go bad, it can open them up to regulatory breaches and fines,” Tildesley said.
“At the same time, they know they’ll have to change as manufacturers evolve their technologies and products. The good news is that IBN and IEC 61850 aren’t new to the industry – they’re proven tools that can do the heavy lifting and remove the guesswork from some critical networking processes.
Focused on moving data from point A to point B, Belden can support utilities in implementing IBN and IEC 61850.
“With Australian-based solutions engineers, we help utilities optimise their network design by working through questions like: what obstacles are you going to face, what limitations do you have, and what level of redundancy do you need?” Tildesley said.
“From there, we make sure they’re using the right product for the application – which may mean adapting networking processes first, and then selecting the best-fit solution to match.”
As Australia’s electricity grid expands in scale and complexity, approaches such as intent-based networking in conjunction with IEC 61850 offer utilities a pathway to eliminate networking guesswork, reduce risk, and build resilient, future-ready infrastructure.
With experienced local support and proven technologies already at their disposal, utilities that move early will be best placed to unlock the full value of renewable energy and storage integration.
This feature appeared in the Autumn edition of Energy.
