It’s monsoon season here in Arizona, so we desert dwellers know as much as anybody about the power of a storm. We also understand the problems that storms can create, such as taking out the power.
However, natural occurrences like storms and other unexpected events like power line cuts by backhoes aren’t the only external challenges with which power utilities have to contend. In a recent blog Dave Christophe, Director of Utilities Marketing at Alcatel-Lucent, explained that there’s now an additional consideration that could negatively impact power company abilities to bring people and businesses power consistently, cost effectively, and safely. That is the systematic decommissioning of legacy telephone and data networks.
Sun setting analog, frame relay, and TDM networks, Christophe explains, eliminates the communications infrastructure on which power utilities have long relied to transmit data from substations and do teleprotection, as just a couple examples.
Christophe in his piece references a recent article by his colleague Mark Madden, Vice President of North American Utilities at Alcatel-Lucent, in which the latter notes the risks of such sun setting and offers tips on steps utilities should take to avoid any interruption in the networks on which they rely – and thus in their power infrastructure and services overall. Madden also provides an example of what the transition away from legacy communications networks could lead to if not managed properly.
The example involves a regional utility that depends upon circuit-switched and frame relay technologies to support dynamic line rating sensors that track the characteristics of high-voltage transmission lines, including heat load and sagging.
“Imagine that the carrier that provided their circuit-switched and frame relay network –which, although outdated, were reliable – suddenly served notice that they planned to shut down the service within 120 days,” writes Madden. “This might sound extreme, but it is a realistic scenario. Required notice periods in many parts of the country are very short.”
To avoid getting into such a pinch, Christophe and Madden urge utilities to develop plans to transition from legacy to newer communications services and technologies.
]]>This is the third in the three part series looking at how IP, which has been playing an important role in business transformation for some time, now has become critical to the utilities industry as it is leveraging the transformation of communications networks to IP to maximize smart grid deployments. In short, taking full advantage of things like smart metering and big data means to improve usage, real-time information and improved interoperability.
The future of the smart grid has unfolded slowly partially because adoption is more than a technology issue, and because while businesses want reliability, utilities demand it; a cautious IP migration is almost a given. In fact, part of the path to adoption goes through social challenges, not just technology investment.
As a GridTalk posting on managing the IP evolution inside and outside the organization, by Raul Katz, Ph.D., Director of Business Strategy Research, Columbia Institute for Tele-Information noted, assimilating the new technology on a social level is as significant as making the capital expenditures.
“Changing the business processes, training employees, adapting your organization and operations to the benefit you can derive from technology – in economics this is called the accumulation of intangible capital – means that once you purchase the systems it will take you some time to get to that point, especially in large companies,” noted Raul Katz, director of business strategy research at the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information at Columbia Business School. “It’s called the lag effect. We’ve typically seen this take three to five years, because you’re dealing with human beings and social systems.”
Source: To download GridTalk click here.
He also explained that utilities will have the most success with their IP migration if they focus on change management programs and training.
“In many cases, the programs need to be combined with incentives – not necessarily material – to adopt the new modes of operation,” he noted. “These could range from recognition to additional training activities.”
There also is the need to get it right from the beginning. This need to combine programs with incentives was a big focus for Creos Luxembourg S.A. when it embarked on an ambitious, multi-faceted IP/MPLS project for its national electricity and gas network to replace its existing TDM-based communications system. “With latencies of 5ms-6ms between connecting nodes, you have to have a very high level of control to guarantee service and performance,” noted Patrick Colling, Creos communications expert.
When Creos rolled out its MPLS network, it consulted numerous vendors and had them analyze the situation and test four current differential protections talking together over four high voltage stations to ensure teleprotection.
This methodical process took time, but it has paid off for Creos.
“Since the beginning of 2013, teleprotection has worked throughout our network without any incidents, and we can say that for us there is no difference in teleprotection between the classical interconnection and IP/MPLS,” he said.
Cyber security also requires caution.
“IP is the best-known protocol around the world, so there is absolutely the need to dedicate a lot of time to analyzing how best to bring cybersecurity into the transmission system,” Colling noted. “That took us a complete year. We analyzed it and have now finalized our design assisted by Alcatel-Lucent. It includes things like encryption, firewalls and new security features for routers. You need to analyze your services and how to secure them from beginning to end, and we are convinced that through our investments we have done just that.”
But the benefits of migrating to IP have been worth the time for Creos and others. The future of the smart grid, after all, is going to be heavily reliant on the underlying communications infrastructure transformation to all IP.
A few years ago, the idea of a smart grid and things such as smart metering was the stuff of science fiction. But thanks to recent innovations, a utility that is not working on a migration to IP is behind the curve.
In this second of a three-part series on the value of the migration utility infrastructure to IP as the means to enable and enhance the value of smart grids, we look at an expert’s view of the challenges as highlighted in a recent GridTalk posting by Bart Vrancken, utilities solutions architect at Alcatel-Lucent, who noted, “Utilities telecom used to be very simple, handled in the background with a very small team…The explosive growth in intelligent grid devices with communication capabilities was not foreseen at all several years back. But now we see numerous examples of customers deploying these technologies.”
That’s partially because the idea of a single, converged IP architecture has been shown to work at this point, and IP/MPLS is both reliable and efficient enough for utilities that cannot afford anything less than mission-critical reliability.
Source: To download GridTalk click here.
As Vrancken explains, a 99.999 percent reliable IP/MPLS infrastructure and intelligent sensors throughout the distribution layer and at consumer end points yields:
It does all of this while allowing more seamless integration of distributed renewable energy sources. That’s a nifty trick, and a good reason why an increasing number of utilities have started to make the IP migration.
“Of course, with IP protocol reaching to all corners of the network, cybersecurity becomes an important issue that utilities must address,” he said. “We’re pushing very hard to have IP/MPLS deeper in the network, so security is integrated throughout our solutions – all included from the beginning in the design.”
One of the reasons MPLS is favored among utilities is that it works both with modern IP services as well as older technologies. This seamless integration is essential for utilities, which need in most cases to make a gradual transition and keep some of the older infrastructure while the migration occurs.
IP/MPLS also is necessary to support the great volume of devices that are expected to emerge as part of the overall move to IP. According to GridTalk, there will be 50 billion connected devices by 2015. Of that total, 12 percent will be related to the utilities space. That’s a lot of devices!
“Once you’re talking about the low-voltage side of your network it means a factor of 100 more nodes than on your high-voltage transmission network,” noted Vrancken. “By the time you move to a different focus level deeper in the network, you have another device expansion factor of 100. So, if you have 100 high-voltage substations in a small country such as Belgium, for example, the low-voltage distribution sites will grow by a factor of 1,000.”
The flexibility and automation needed for such volume is well accommodated by IP/MPLS. Indeed, it is becoming increasingly clear that the path to optimized smart grids is going to rest on leveraging IP/MPLS migration.
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