Moxa Debuts Industry’s First IEC 61850-3 Compliant Fanless vPAC Server at CIGRE 2026, Enabling Virtualization of Software-defined Substations

At the CIGRE 2026 Paris Session, Moxa, a global leader in industrial communications and networking, will showcase the DA-920E Series, the power industry’s first IEC 61850-3 compliant fanless Virtual Protection, Automation, and Control (vPAC) server and our innovation for digital substation infrastructure. Designed to support software-defined substations, the new-class substation-grade, fanless server addresses one of the industry’s biggest challenges—how to increase intelligence at the grid edge without increasing operational risk and maintenance, while ensuring deterministic performance, reliability, and cybersecurity.

As power networks become increasingly decentralized and software-driven, utility companies (utilities) are increasingly integrating renewable energy resources and extending grid operations to remote locations with uncrewed substations. On the other hand, operators are under increasing pressure to enhance operational efficiency, strengthen cybersecurity measures, and reduce product life-cycle costs. These trends are fueling interest in software-defined substations, in which protection, automation, monitoring, and operational applications can be virtualized and managed on one unified computing infrastructure.

Power Industry’s First Fanless vPAC Server to Enable Software-defined Substations

Purpose-built for harsh utility environments, the DA-920E Series, a new class of IEC 61850-3 compliant fanless vPAC servers, represents a paradigm shift for uncrewed, remote substations at the grid edge. It helps future-proof substations by supporting virtualization-ready architectures. By eliminating mechanical cooling fans—often a common point of failure in harsh environments—and preventing performance throttling, this rugged platform allows critical protection and control applications to run securely on virtual machines.

At CIGRE 2026 Paris Session, Moxa is demonstrating its new DA-920E fanless computing platform and how it facilitates the transition to software-defined substations. This approach simplifies application deployment and life-cycle management across remote and unstaffed substations. The demonstration emphasizes how this hardware-agnostic solution offers utilities unparalleled flexibility, seamless scalability, easier centralized management, and effective cross-vendor software integration, eliminating reliance on outdated hardware.

Demonstration of Operational Visibility and Communication Resilience

Complementing the fanless vPAC platform, Moxa will demonstrate a fully operational IEC 61850 digital substation architecture that integrates network visibility, communication monitoring, time synchronization, network redundancy, and secure communications to help utilities achieve greater operational efficiency.

The live demonstration illustrates how operational technology networks can maintain deterministic performance while providing engineers with the visibility needed to rapidly identify, diagnose, and resolve communication issues. By combining resilient networking infrastructure with cybersecurity-aware operations, Moxa helps utilities strengthen reliability and availability of mission-critical protection and control systems.

Three Technical Papers, One Modernization Journey

In addition to live demonstrations, Moxa experts will present three technical papers that collectively illustrate the overall journey towards substation modernization:

• Cybersecurity and System Resilience: Presents how deep packet inspection technology can provide real-time inline protection for IEC 61850 communications without compromising the performance of deterministic protection.
• Knowledge and Competency in PAC Engineering: Introduces a practical training framework to close the networking skill gap in protection and automation engineering. As digital substations become increasingly network-centric, Moxa highlights that successful transformation requires both technology and workforce readiness.
• Distributed Energy and Grid Edge: Presents a dual-gateway microgrid architecture that unifies distributed energy resources (DER) management and electric vehicles (EV) charging through IEEE 2030.5 and OCPP, enhancing energy management capabilities of the microgrid while enabling its participation in broader distribution grid orchestration.

Your Trusted Partner From Networking Infrastructure to Substation Transformation

“CIGRE 2026 is an opportunity to demonstrate that the future of substation modernization is not only about communications infrastructure, but also about building the software-ready operational foundation required for the next generation of power systems,” said Shengchien Lai, Senior Industry Manager, Energy Solution Department at Moxa. “A combination of resilient networking, cyber resilience, and virtualization-ready computing platforms, this marks Moxa’s strategic evolution from a trusted industrial networking solution supplier to a long-term technology partner for complete substation transformation to help utilities confidently transition to software-defined substations and more autonomous grid-edge operations.”

As utilities continue their journey toward digitalization, decarbonization, and grid resilience, Moxa’s solutions provide the infrastructure foundation needed to support the future of intelligent, software-defined power networks. To learn more about “Architecting Every Stage of the Substation Journey,” visit Moxa at Booth Level 3, C172 at CIGRE Paris Session 2026.