IN Brief:
- Zenon 16 demonstrations will combine legacy equipment with IEC 61850 digital substation engineering.
- Virtualised vPAC, vHMI, and vRTU functions are intended to reduce dependence on individual hardware replacement cycles.
- DMS, renewable generation, storage, HVDC, cybersecurity, and IIoT services extend the architecture beyond individual substations.
COPA-DATA will use Enlit Europe 2026 in Vienna to demonstrate how its zenon software platform can operate across legacy substation equipment, IEC 61850 digital environments, virtualised control, and wider grid-management applications without requiring utilities to standardise on one hardware supplier. The programme, running from 10 to 12 November, combines substation HMI and SCADA, gateway functions, distribution management, renewable generation, storage, cybersecurity, and operational data services within the same software-defined automation architecture.
The centre of the demonstration is zenon 16 and its IEC 61850 engineering capability, including a new configurator intended to support top-down engineering from Substation Configuration Description files. Rather than rebuilding device relationships manually inside each supervisory application, utilities can use the substation’s digital configuration as a starting point while retaining connections to older equipment that does not belong to a fully digital IEC 61850 environment. COPA-DATA is presenting that mixed-estate capability as a route to staged modernisation rather than wholesale replacement.
Transmission and distribution networks rarely reach an age at which every protection device, remote terminal unit, HMI, communications link, and control server can be replaced together, leaving utilities to operate several technology generations simultaneously. Primary equipment can remain serviceable for decades while control hardware and software move through much shorter product cycles, so a modernisation programme often has to introduce new functions without forcing replacement of equipment whose electrical role remains satisfactory. Vendor-independent software becomes useful only where it can bridge those generations without weakening deterministic control, maintainability, or cybersecurity.
COPA-DATA will also demonstrate virtualised vPAC, vHMI, and vRTU functions, moving selected control and interface tasks away from dedicated proprietary appliances and onto software-defined computing platforms. Physical substations still require breakers, switches, protection devices, instrument transformers, sensors, communications, and dependable auxiliary power, but virtualisation can alter the layer above those assets by allowing functions traditionally tied to individual hardware boxes to be deployed and maintained separately from the equipment performing the primary electrical task.
That separation can reduce dependence on a supplier’s hardware replacement cycle, although it transfers more responsibility into software lifecycle management, computing infrastructure, networking, and configuration control. Patching a virtual environment may be operationally simpler than replacing an appliance in a live substation, but utilities still have to validate software versions, control access, manage redundancy, document changes, and prove that timing and availability remain acceptable for the application. The hardware may become more generic while the engineering discipline around the control function becomes more important.
Zenon’s distribution management and multi-site functions extend the architecture beyond the individual substation, with COPA-DATA planning demonstrations that connect local automation to wider network control while adding renewable generation, battery storage, and HVDC into the operating picture. Distribution networks increasingly contain solar plants, batteries, flexible industrial loads, and charging infrastructure alongside conventional substations, creating a larger volume of status, measurement, alarm, and control data that has to remain intelligible across field and control-centre systems.
Renewable applications at Enlit will include wind turbine monitoring, wind park control, solar PV, hybrid renewable plants, and battery energy storage, while IIoT services add MQTT, device management, dashboards, and fleet-level reporting. Pulling those datasets into one environment can simplify visibility across geographically dispersed assets, although common communications do not by themselves produce useful operational information; naming, time synchronisation, data quality, alarm management, and consistent engineering models still determine whether operators can use the information reliably.
Cybersecurity runs through the same architecture because a more connected grid presents more interfaces that have to be managed and defended. COPA-DATA says the Enlit programme will cover NIS2, the Cyber Resilience Act, NERC CIP, IEC 62443, and IEC 62351, spanning regulatory and technical requirements across products, industrial automation, and power-system communications. A software-defined control environment can make systems easier to update, but it also requires a clear inventory of software, identities, permissions, interfaces, and dependencies across infrastructure that may have been installed decades apart.
Much of the substation proposition is an extension of material COPA-DATA presented earlier in 2026, including zenon 16, IEC 61850 engineering, and virtualised control, so the Enlit appearance is better read as a broader demonstration of the architecture than as a new utility deployment. The Vienna programme expands the scope into DMS, multi-site management, renewable assets, storage, HVDC, cybersecurity, and IIoT, placing the substation functions inside a wider operating environment rather than presenting another isolated HMI or SCADA upgrade.
The practical test will come on mixed-vendor networks where availability and maintenance matter more than whether several applications can be shown together on an exhibition stand. Utilities already have large installed bases, long asset lives, and increasing requirements for renewable integration and cyber resilience, making staged modernisation unavoidable in many systems. COPA-DATA’s Enlit architecture is built around that constraint: retain suitable equipment where it can still perform its electrical function, move selected automation functions into a more flexible software layer, and keep interoperability intact as the surrounding grid acquires another generation of digital control.
