This document discusses centralized substation protection and control (CPC) systems. It provides a brief history of power system protection and control and how CPC has evolved. It describes the impact of changing grid topology that is driving more advanced protection and control solutions. It then examines CPC architectures within a substation and the technologies that enable CPC like merging units and communication networks. It also discusses reliability, cost, testing and advanced applications of CPC. Finally, it reviews demonstration projects of CPC and emerging applications like dynamic state estimation based protection and wide area protection.