Alliander modernises its electricity grid with Red Hat for long-term reliability in balance with rapid innovation

Long‑lasting transformers and short‑lifecycle IT are not a natural pairing. Utilities run process installations designed to last for decades, while the control software ages far faster. Deferring replacement isn’t an option, because operations must stay online with up‑to‑date security. So how do you resolve this? How can you procure operational technology (OT) – the technology that runs the power grid – today with confidence it will still run reliably by 2035? Alliander found a way.

Dutch energy infrastructure was built to last for decades, with assets such as power transformers and switchgear expected to last 30 to 40 years. When the network was designed, software was a minor factor. Today it is the nervous system of OT. The catch is that software lifecycles run in years, not decades.

That presents a dilemma for grid operators like Alliander. Replacing OT assets early wastes precious time and budget, yet outdated control software introduces security and operational risk. Meanwhile, the industry faces external pressures such as grid congestion driven by the rapid rise of solar and wind generation, and a persistent shortage of technical talent in the Netherlands.

Simplifying complexity

After a thorough evaluation and validation phase that weighed timelines, risks, and business drivers, Alliander chose to decouple its hardware from the control systems so each lifecycle can be managed independently. Implementing software-defined substations would be challenging, given Alliander’s estate is made up of various vendor‑specific solutions, and must suffer minimal disruption. Mission‑critical environments must be predictable and reproducible, allow for updates on a risk‑managed basis, and every change must demonstrably produce the same outcome.

What was originally based on proprietary hardware and software now needed to be lifecycled using commercial off-the-shelf hardware and software. 

Alliander set its sights on open source, which offers a vendor‑agnostic foundation that preserves flexibility in both OT and IT choices. It also brings the transparency, explainability, and traceability that matter for an organization serving the public interest.

With the need for business continuity, Alliander engaged enterprise open source software provider Red Hat and deployed Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), a flexible, optimised operating system built to respond to rapid change. As a part of the subscription, Red Hat  provides advisory services and support including ongoing quality assurance, security-as-code, and lifecycle management.

OT and IT side by side

Together with Red Hat,  Alliander worked to virtualize its critical secondary applications  so existing OT assets could keep operating independent of the software’s shorter lifecycle. Decoupling software from hardware makes control more agile without touching the field – you extend asset life, reduce variants, and accelerate the innovation cycle while maintaining grid availability.

The decoupling effort took several years, but regular software updates are now business as usual at Alliander. Legacy control systems that will be needed over the next decade now run stably thanks to virtualization on a foundation of RHEL for Real-Time. OT workloads are virtualized using RHEL for Real-Time Kernel‑based Virtual Machine (RT-KVM) to achieve the real‑time requirement. Standardising on Red Hat Enterprise Linux brings consistency across environments and systems, which in turn provides portability, so Alliander can deploy and move existing and future workloads where it chooses. 

Mission‑critical requirements

At first, anomalies related to the real-time requirement emerged that could have undermined reproducibility – the same workload produced different outcomes depending on the version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. With support from Red Hat, targeted fixes and fine‑tuning made workload behavior predictable and reproducible.

Alliander also needed a way to process network‑interface signals at the edge with minimal delay. Signals are routed directly to specific CPU cores to manage both latency and jitter. Sensor signals – the ‘ears and nerves’ of substations – are digitized and forwarded to the central compute environment. Alliander, together with Red Hat’s product engineering teams, worked to adjust the relevant technical components to address its real-time requirements. 

Building ecosystems together

For challenges like these, sharing knowledge is how you accelerate transformation. Events such as Red Hat Summit: Connect – where Alliander presented these insights – are invaluable. By telling your story among peers, you plant a seed that helps other organizations make collaboration the default. As the market moves, open source moves with it to deliver new, innovative solutions. We would like to invite our industry peers to come together and collaborate on using open source to solve our common challenges. 

2030 as a tipping point

Of the 400 substations Alliander operates, about 100 now run on software-defined architecture. And that’s just the start. By 2030, the next generation of software‑defined systems should be the standard for new stations, making it easier to upgrade to the next generation based on the best technology available at the time to create lasting value in the face of unpredictability.

Red Hat will be at Enlit 2025 in Bilbao, Spain. Visit the Red Hat booth #5.F11 to meet experts and learn how Red Hat is supporting the digital transformation in the electrification domain. Get more info about Red Hat’s Enlit presence on the web page.