For decades, the power industry has relied on "black box" proprietary appliances. While reliable, these hard-wired fixed-function devices have created a landscape of vendor lock-in, where hardware refresh cycles (often lasting 20 years) dictate the pace of software innovation. The operational effort required just to apply a cyber-security patch can be immense, diverting resources that could be focused on introducing new functionality or AI capabilities.As we face a global talent shortage and the urgent need to integrate renewables and AI data center demands into the grid, the status quo is no longer sustainable. We need a software-defined electrification strategy that untangles the grid of these black boxes. Similar to the 4G and 5G transformation in telecom networks, open source technology is a key enabler for this, and where Red Hat is the enabler for utilities to make open source components usable as enterprise-grade platforms for critical infrastructure. Our open platforms are tested for multi-vendor and multi-technology workloads of mixed-criticality running side by side.This article details the Red Hat lab configuration for digital substations, providing a foundation for you to begin testing with open Red Hat platforms in your own environments.Compute infrastructure for the digital gridThe IEC 61850 standard introduces digitization of substations on the electric power grid. This means many hard-wired signals are replaced by digital communications using Ethernet (so-called station and process bus).The only hard-wired interfaces are those directly connected with the primary equipment such as circuit breakers or transformers. Merging unit (MU) devices are used to translate analog signals for voltage and current into digital format, and to make them available to all intelligent electronic devices (IED) for protection, automation, and control, as well as all the other systems performing monitoring, measurements, and visualization. Eventually, this will also make it easy for even AI systems to use.Historically, utilities are used to buying single-purpose appliances from vendors. These appliances lock in proprietary management and maintenance procedures and tool ecosystems. Adding new functionality means adding (and wiring) more boxes. Cybersecurity updates happen rarely, due to huge efforts requiring personnel on-site to interact with equipment wired to significant voltage.With communication now happening digitally, utilities can introduce an open platform for all their compute infrastructure in the substation. Process-interfacing units (PIU) such as breaker IEDs (brIED) or MUs cannot be affected now, but critical functions for protection, automation and control (PAC) will be run virtualized, as a virtual machine (VM) or container, side by side with non-critical workloads such as gateways, SCADA, human machine interfaces (HMI), or protection engineer workstations.