Wireless: The smart network for the smart grid and grid modernization
Principal Solution Manager, MANA BD CTO Team
Principal Solution Manager, MANA BD CTO Team
Principal Solution Manager, MANA BD CTO Team
The utilities sector is experiencing major flux. Society is moving towards renewable generation and new competitors are entering the space, and economic forces, security threats and natural disasters add to this pressure. To survive, utilities are undergoing digital transformation by investing in new technologies to modernize the grid and improve existing grid’s security, reliability and resiliency.
A delicate complexity defines the electric power grid infrastructure. Electricity is generated at power stations and distributed over large distances to homes and businesses. Consumers place a continuously variable load on the power grid with their appliances. At every instant, power grid infrastructure management ensures that power generation exactly matches power consumption. When these two quantities do not match, the grid frequency starts to vary from the desired 50Hz/60Hz (depending on country), causing the kind of grid instability that leads to blackouts.
With the growth of sustainable resources like solar and wind, there is now variability in power generation as well as in consumption. For this reason, power utilities managing the grid must be able to constantly monitor and control, both the generated and consumed loads.
It’s time to move on from legacy infrastructure.
As with any complex technology, sensors, remote switches and monitoring equipment are part of the wired critical infrastructure that keeps the power grid humming along. Wired infrastructure is currently supplemented by wireless mesh networks, which provide a patchwork of coverage with varying levels of interoperability and reliability. However, this may not be enough as the demands on these networks continue to increase. In particular, we’re seeing decreases in switch latencies and increases in performance requirements – largely driven by video and data monitoring and the need for proactive Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning-based fault management.
The need for reliable and ubiquitous wireless has never been greater. It has become increasingly important for utilities to have access to a wireless network unaffected by the vagaries of a shared public consumer network and its load-dependent reliability. Security, reliability and independence in the design of wireless network quality is especially important to utilities.
Now is the time for grid modernization to a mission-critical wireless network that can offer advanced, standardized technology driven by a global ecosystem.
Wireless will power the digital transformation.
Some call the power grid the world’s most complex machine. As the grid grows more complex, utilities must adopt digital solutions that enable them to:
- Increase security, reliability and resiliency of power transmission and distribution
- Consolidate islands of disparate communication networks
- Digitize and automate processes using IoT and sensors
- Provide a broadband backbone for real-time remote asset monitoring
- Update aging mission-critical push-to-talk (PTT) solutions with ones based on cellular standards
- Ensure better control over their own financial destiny by selectively moving from an OpEx model to a CapEx model
This is where private networks make their mark. In North America, the newly assigned 900MHz spectrum leased to utilities allows for low-band coverage of the power infrastructure, while the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) Priority Access License (PAL) and General Authorized Access (GAA) spectrum introduces the capacity for grid monitoring of newer data-hungry sensors and controllers in the grid. These and similar agreements elsewhere for access to low band/mid band spectrum has enabled 3GPP-based wireless cellular technology to drive consolidation of diverse mesh networks. Network evolution to cellular brings to utilities the advantages of a large and rapidly developing ecosystem of global sensors and devices.
Follow the unfolding blog series.
My next set of blogs will dive into how private networks provide significant advantages to specific parts of the power grid. We will learn about wireless applications and solutions for power generation, distribution, distributed energy resources and consumer sensors. Security aspects to grid modernization will be addressed. Finally, we will also look at how 5G and Wi-Fi6 will help utilities dive head-first into the future.
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Read our Power grid communications: Network modernization considerations paper