Project Summary

The project addresses Challenge 3, improving energy system resilience and robustness. Communication networks have been designed and provisioned by the electrical utilities themselves and optimised for their needs. Electricity networks require robust and resilient communications systems, with failover and black start resilience a minimum for the most critical infrastructure. Using a single commercial network for power systems would not satisfy the resilience requirements (e.g. current communication systems can be disturbed during a natural event/human error), improving the resilience of such systems would require high levels of investment and increase the carbon footprint. This project will provide communication resilience using combinations of standard commercial networks along with private provision where required, offering cost savings while delivering the same or better Quality of Service (QoS) as existing approaches.

The primary focus is to propose innovative adaptations to the design of standard communication networks (including a combination of fibre, cellular, low power wide area radio and satellite networks) to improve power resilience. CommsConnect will look at more efficient ways of providing communication resilience using more standardised network provision. This will improve the grid efficiency by reducing power outages and reducing restoration time.

The hybrid public/private approach leveraging existing networks will benefit networks through:​

• Better resilience and fewer network outages​;
• The delivery a reliable network at a fraction of the cost of a private network;
• Balancing the trade-off between private and public provision to meet service needs, cyber security requirements and company culture​;
• The use of Commercial off-the-shelf technology to reduce costs;
• Network combinations supporting normal/degraded operations; and​
• Opportunities for feedback benefits to public networks of increased private provision. ​

The team at PNDC provides power and comms experience, with specialisms in 5G, resilience and security. They are currently focussing on next-generation communication frameworks, cyber-attacks, and provides in-depth knowledge of security and privacy in smart grids.

UK Power Networks provides several potential use cases and network topologies for validating concepts developed in this project. They contain an experienced contingent of engineers dedicated to the monitoring, management, and development of its telecommunications networks; as well as the required institutional knowledge and experience in maintaining both public and private telecoms networks.

The proposed solution will be used by the DNOs as a tool to improve the power network resilience and reduce capital and operational costs. However, the main learning from this project can be also applied in other critical infrastructures such as water and gas.

Innovation Justification

Historically, electricity networks were dependent upon bespoke communication solutions but as networks have become smarter and their reliance on telecom solutions has increased, there has been a shift towards more commercial solutions due to the limited availability of high-tech industry specific solutions and their high associated costs. This has now introduced an inherent risk into both the telecoms and electricity networks, due to their high interdependency, with the latest communications technology requiring even more power outputs and expensive network upgrades to support them.

This project will develop an advanced solution that combines various networks to enhance the grid resilience and boost its security. In addition, the solution will:

• Improve cellular provision thus providing more availability;
• Leverage a 5G network design (more edge intelligence, network slicing) to provide opportunities to combine networks with increased quality of service (QoS);
• Propose adaptations to the design of standard communication networks (including a combination of fibre, cellular, low power wide area radio and satellite networks); and
• Provide further resilience by combining low power wide area radio and LEO (Low Earth Orbit) satellite.

PDNC, UK Power Networks and other DNOs have collaborated on many projects and initiatives that have examined the latest communications cyber security challenges and have proposed improvements for smart grid applications and utilities. The Constellation NIC project will be trialling the use of public 5G infrastructure for site-to-site communications, but comms resilience does not form part of the project scope. For this submission, the proposed solution proposed will evaluate and trial methods of improving the resilience of systems such as Constellation. Learnings from these workshops, discussions and projects shall be used to support this solution development.

Network resilience will support long-term benefits for the power utility networks in terms of sustainability, efficiency, and cost savings. This will be achieved by developing appropriate solutions to provide sufficient resilience connectivity to the main distributed power assets. Such resilience connectivity will be used by the DNOs in case of any power failure or loss in one of the communications networks.

The solutions being assessed here is at a nascent state and requires significant development, in a collaborative environment, to determine what a feasible solution could look like for the industry. The SIF mechanism and its phased approach provides project partners the opportunity to focus on the development, collaboration, and feasibility of the solution during discovery phase, which will significantly de-risk the Alpha and Beta Phases.

Project Benefits

Financial - future reductions in the cost of operating the network

• Target output: Reduction in the cost of network operations
• Calculation: This will be determined by comparing the costs of developing and maintaining a bespoke communications solution against the costs of developing and maintaining the proposed solution for the required levels of Quality of Service (QoS) and resilience.
• Justification for target output: As the grid becomes smarter, an increasing proportion of costs move from the power network to the communications network that supports it, as communication requirements grow. It therefore becomes more important to keep communication costs low.
• Timeline to achieve target output: End of Beta Phase

Improved network resilience and fewer outages

• Target output: A reduction in the number of outages caused by loss of communications.
• Calculation: This will be determined by comparing the number of unplanned outages that currently occur using the existing communications solutions against a modelled view of the number of unplanned outages that occur under the proposed communications solution
• Justification for target output: The increasing dependence of the grid on advanced communications means that loss of telecommunications may result in part of the network going down triggering electricity network outages, which may in turn trigger further telecoms network outages. By implementing a more resilient solution, that reduces the risk that the electricity networks are negatively impacted by commercial telecoms outages.
• Timeline to achieve target output: end of Beta Phase.

A full cost benefit analysis would depend on the resilience requirements of different smart grid communications, and the resulting reduction in infrastructure requirements compared to deploying a fully private network, which will be quantified in WP2 based on the results of WP1.