By Sylvie Perrin and Vincent Sermanson, RTE, France The Iberian blackout that occurred on April 28, 2025, at 12:33 PM was classified as a Level 3 incident—the highest...
Issue 077 September 2026
Cover Art
Cover Story
Featured Articles
Chilean Grid Blackout of February 2025:
Causes and Lessons By Víctor Velar, Jaime Peralta, Carlos Alvear, and Eugenio Quintana, Coordinador Eléctrico Nacional (CEN), Chile At 15:15:41 local time on Tuesday, February 25, 2025, an...
Why is the Grid Changing
By Janio Leonardo Los, Ricardo Lira, Marcelo Cascardo Cardoso, Independent System Operator, Brazil Power systems were designed around large synchronous generators. Their rotating masses store kinetic...
Improving Grid Performance and Reliability – A Statutory...
By Matthew Lewis, Manager of Event Analysis, NERC, USA “Gentlemen, we are always going to relentlessly chase perfection, knowing full well we will not catch it because nothing is perfect. In the...
An Interesting Overreach mis-operation and the process of...
by Paul Hodges, Tampa Electric, USA Acknowledgment: The author would like to acknowledge and thank Jai Subbarayan at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories Inc. (SEL) for his assistance and...
Editorial
Editorial – Issue 077 September 2026
by Alex Apostolov, Editor-in-Chief The Changing Face of Fault and Disturbance Analysis Every time I sit down to write about disturbance recording and analysis, I am reminded that this is one of the...
Last Word
AI – Reshaping Fault and Disturbance Analysis
by Alex Apostolov, USA Fault and disturbance analysis has always sat at the heart of power system protection engineering. When a breaker trips, a relay operates, or a transient ripples through a...
The Guru
Interview with PACWorld Guru: Prof. Dr. Omer Usta
PAC World: When and where were you born? O.U.: I was born in 1959 in Trabzon, which is a major city on the Black Sea cost of northeastern part of Turkiye. Founded in 756 BC, it serves as a...
History
Walter Schossig: A Lifetime Dedicated to Keeping the Lights On
by Thomas Schossig, OMICRON electronics GmbH, Austria Since the very first edition of PAC World, Walter has been a valued contributor to our magazine. His first paper, “Introduction to the History of...
News
Europe Power Grid Triumphs over Sudden 9.7 GW Shock
Europe’s electricity grid successfully navigated a massive operational challenge on Wednesday evening, smoothly managing a sudden 9.7-gigawatt (GW) plunge in solar generation caused by a historic...
Addition to the TAB Hall of Honor
Dr. Damir Novosel was added to the IEEE Technical Activities Board (TAB) Hall of Honor for creating an IEEE global industry engagement vision and model. The TAB Hall of Honor recognizes individuals...
CIGRE Technical Council Award
Erik Sperling is one of the 2026 recipients of the CIGRE Technical Council Award in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the work of Study Committee A3 – Transmission and distribution...
High-Performance Testing for fully Digital Substations
The ongoing transformation toward fully digital substations requires advanced testing solutions with significantly higher performance. OMICRON has introduced DANEO Control on a MBX2, a powerful...
Four PTR Ports. Two RP Pairs. One MicroSync.
Meinberg is unveiling it’s latest microSync product, the TRX 250. This release adds an additional 2x PTP ports to the existing microSync TRX 200 Series. With 6x 1GbE ports supporting NTP and 4 of...
New CIGRE Fellow
Prof. Dr. Nirmal Kumar C. Nair received the CIGRE Fellow in 2026, towards acknowledgement of his significant contribution to the activities of Study Committee B5 (Protection and automation) as Green...
DBF-A: Distributed Busbar Differential Protection with Process...
DBF-A extends ZIV’s distributed busbar differential protection approach with a process-bus-based architecture for modern substations. Communication between central and bay units uses IEC 61869-9...
MACsec Today, Quantum-Safe Grid Tomorrow
At SOC-E, cybersecurity is a core pillar of the next generation of digital and virtual substations. The technology portfolio already includes the capability to implement MACsec, enabling secure...
ZeroLoss- Redundancy for Critical Substations
The Westermo Lynx RedBox is a compact, high-performance redundancy device built for substations where communication failure is not an option. Engineered for harsh electrical environments, it is...
PSCC Update
by Eric Thibodeau, Hydro Quebec, Quebec, Canada Those who were working with power system communications in the 1990s and early 2000s remember a landscape that often felt like a tower of Babel. Each...
Industry Updates
IEC 61850 Update
by Keith Gray, POWER Engineers – a member of WSP, USA OCL-based validation represents a fundamental improvement in how IEC 61850 systems are engineered. Poor SCL file quality remains one of the...
Corrigendum for IEC 61850-7-420 and new edition for part 7-410
by Tom Berry, Schneider-Electric IEC TC 57 WG 17 is in charge of power system intelligent electronic device communication and associated data models for microgrids, distributed energy resources and...
IEEE PES PSRC Update
IEEE Power & Energy Society (PES) Power System Relaying and Control (PSRC) Committee PES Power System Relaying and Control (PSRC) Committee is responsible for the development of standards, guides...
CIGRE Study Committee B5
by Peter Bishop, Transpower NZ Ltd, New Zealand News from CIGRE Study Committee B5 Protection and Automation The CIGRE 2026 Paris Session took place from 23 to 28 August 2026, with a record of more...
