SEAPATH (Software Enabled Automation Platform and Artifacts) is part of a major transition for the energy sector, which must face the challenges of digitalization (Smart Grids) and decarbonization.

Major energy players, such as RTE , have identified several vital needs that gave rise to this project:

Moving beyond proprietary hardware: Historically, electrical substations operated with rigid, often monolithic, physical equipment tied to specific suppliers. SEAPATH's genesis lies in the desire to replace this physical hardware with flexible, interoperable, and vendor-independent software infrastructures ("hardware and vendor agnostic").

Creating an open-source standard: The industry needed an open and standardized solution. By leveraging existing and mature open-source components (such as Linux and KVM), SEAPATH was designed to pool development efforts and ensure long-term technological sustainability.

The convergence of IT (Information Technology) and OT (Operational Technology):

• IT: This world brings modern standards in computing, virtualization, DevOps, and cybersecurity.
• OT: This world concerns electrical engineering and the control of critical physical infrastructures (the actual management of the electrical network).

Why bring them together? Until now, these two worlds were separate. SEAPATH acts as a bridge to bring the software agility of IT directly into the highly critical industrial environments of OT, while ensuring network reliability.

Smile & SEAPATH

Smile positions itself as a co-builder and a true center of excellence for the SEAPATH community!

With our strong open source DNA, we aim to replicate with SEAPATH the industrialization successes we have achieved with other solutions such as Yocto .

Our specialized expertise in critical infrastructure allows us to support major players in the energy sector, such as RTE , which we are assisting in the modernization and virtualization of its control centers (R#SPACE and CCV projects).

Our in-depth expertise in critical infrastructure allows us to meet the most complex challenges:

• Critical real-time developments: Our teams intervene directly in the Linux kernel to guarantee strict real-time and high availability of virtual clusters (ptpkvm optimizations, XDP, Pacemaker reliability).
• Interoperability: We have developed major building blocks such as a plugin for the IEC 61850 industrial protocol.
• Deployment and sustainability: We support manufacturers in integrating the solution and offer long-term support (based on our MCO-MCS Care offer ) to take over completely, especially on its Debian version.

Our goal is to bring together cutting-edge expertise in virtualization, cybersecurity and real-time systems to accelerate the digital transformation of electrical substations.

Features

• Apache 2.0 License
• Governance LF Energy (The Linux Foundation)
• Key technologies: Linux, KVM (Type 1 hypervisor), libvirt, Pacemaker

Created to be robust, agnostic (hardware and vendors) and interoperable, SEAPATH relies on the infrastructure as code paradigm and incorporates an extremely rigorous cybersecurity approach, validated by more than 700 daily latency and performance tests.