Learnings

Outcomes

The energy transition will require greater telemetry, monitoring and communications to be successful.  The benefits of 5G utilisation were explored in this project in support of energy system transition. 

Project outcomes:

The Final Report is a detailed description of the project’s outcomes: initial research to identify where NG could use 5G, how to deploy 5G in different environments (ET/GT) and the benefits it could bring. The key outcomes from the project are summarised below:

5G is the latest generation of cellular mobile telecommunications technologies and services. Like

earlier generations it has significant performance improvements over its predecessors - ten-fold

for key performance indicators. Unlike them it incorporates features tailored to specific industry

sectors. For example, in energy networks, it can be deployed as a private network tailoring the 5G

network operational requirements to critical national infrastructure needs.

5G has been trialled extensively in electricity distribution networks, including in Sweden, China and

Ireland. UK Power Networks is doing a trial of 5G at a substation with Vodafone and the University

of Strathclyde. There is a complementary and unique opportunity to do innovative trials in the

wide-area transmission networks, not only for electricity but also for gas, to evaluate 5G’s

suitability as an enterprise platform uniting communication with management of transmission

network operations, contributing to digital transformation, productivity, and efficiency.

The core use cases explored in this report provide a strong justification for trials to validate the

benefits that 5G can offer NG in areas such as communications resilience (including using 5G as a

primary or secondary communications link), asset management, workforce management

digitalisation (including construction of a new site), and supervisory control (SCADA). Many of the

cases identified will also underpin the critical infrastructure improvements to support the net zero

strategic goals. For GT, for example, emission monitoring, e.g. of methane gas, is an important

use-case that contributes to net zero.

The most significant continuous benefit comes from workforce management digitalisation

(estimated £14.4 million annually). There could be a £10 million saving at construction sites due to

better workforce management (especially as these sites often have no wireless communications

coverage of any kind). Overall, we estimate £103million savings over five years. More savings could be

quantified if the baseline costs of different workflows and processes become available in the

future.

Based on the 5G solution design and the business benefit analysis, our recommendation is

to begin a trial programme to test, learn, and validate the proposed solutions. This

programme will provide a platform to measure the business impact of 5G on strategic elements of

the NG networks while providing the opportunity to tailor the approach before scaling. The rough

order of magnitude costs of equipment for a private 5G network is between £300,000 and £400,000 per site.

What does 5G bring to energy networks?

Like earlier generations, 5G has introduced several step changes. Increased performance (ten

times better than 4G) is one such change but the adoption of cloud computing is the most

significant. 5G has been virtualised and disaggregated into microservices that can be built into

advanced enterprise applications. It also integrates capabilities such as precision timing and

deterministic networking that makes it suitable as a platform for demanding critical infrastructure

services.

This brings with it additional security issues that must be considered in a risk assessment for a

critical national infrastructure application such as energy transmission. Many are not specific to 5G

and NG has experience already in running private cloud-based applications in virtualised

environments within NG’s critical national infrastructure data centres. 5G security is much

improved over 4G, in particular for the secure mutual authentication of devices and networks with

each other. The GSMA has provided many complementary tools for IoT devices and for

certification.

5G provides much better support for private networks. This is partly a consequence of the

“softwarisation” noted above. It is also supported in the 5G standards and by the regulator Ofcom

in its approach to spectrum licensing.

There are gaps at present. 5G does not yet have mature cellular IoT specifications and a wide

range of devices may not be on the market for four to six years. Specification of several of its

advanced capabilities are not yet complete. The integration of legacy equipment, network

technologies, and communications protocols requires further study. These gaps are no blockers to

trials though. 

As part of the project a scoping exercise for opportunities to follow up with a small-scale site trial was undertaken which is summarised below:

What could be trialled as part of a follow up project?

There are four main use-case categories: communications resilience, asset management,

workforce management digitalisation (including construction of a new site), and supervisory

control (SCADA). The first is about 5G service deployment; the others are about how 5G services

can be used.

Where could the trials be done?

Deployment site types and solutions for them have been identified: the electricity substation and

the above-ground gas transmission site, linear assets, and a “mobile mobile network”, the

network-on-wheels. The integration and deployment options were analysed in depth: a site-local

implementation, (possibly a network-on-wheels) and an implementation integrated with NG’s ICT

services. Rough order of magnitude costs for the 5G components are provided.

Key opportunities to be included in future follow up work:

There are two specific examples that point towards future opportunities that were not in the scope of the project:

●     Asset management - the technologies used by NG to deliver the data needed to manage assets are diverse and have been deployed as individual monitoring systems.  NG wants to establish an IoT-oriented approach to asset health monitoring and collection of data from those assets for health monitoring. The software and data backhaul communications architecture could be the subject of a follow up project as part of innovation or BaU.

●     Workforce management - many types of data are collected manually by field engineers, as well as samples for analysis. A 5G trial could illustrate technical strengths of 5G in managing these activities. This, however, is just part of the solution. 5G is designed to integrate with enterprise platforms to create workflows that manage the collection of data in the field and turn it into business information.            

Integration of satellite networks into an overall resilient communications network - Gas transmission uses a satellite service, with DSL as a backup. 3GPP is studying the integration of “non-terrestrial networks”, (NTNs) of which satellite systems are one type.  When proposals for NTNs emerge from 3GPP we recommend that we revisit our communications resilience use-cases. Alternatives to GEO constellation services will be available, such as Starlink or OneWeb, which are LEO constellations offering much higher quality of service and affordability. 

Lessons Learnt

The research progressed in four phases termed: Educate (WP1), Explore (WP2), Ideate (WP3), and Define (WP4).

“Educate” focussed on explaining key features of 5G, driven mainly by the questions asked by NG in the original RfQ for the project. It was done mainly as desktop research. Much of the initial report from this phase has been carried over into the Final Report. “Explore” was a discovery phase to identify the use-cases, studied in more detail in the “Ideate” phase to develop a deeper understanding of the “as is” situation, NG’s vision for “as it could be”, and the benefits 5G would bring now and in the future. These were done through workshops and interviews, with detailed discussion on key issues with the NG team. Finally, “Define” developed proposals for 5G solutions suitable for deployment at NG’s sites. The Final Report (WP5) brought results from the earlier phases together and made Recommendations for NG to consider, including a workplan for a trial phase.

We expected to define 5G solutions to quite specific technical requirements. The discovery phase of the project indicated however that the requirement was operational in general, e.g. the issues related to replacing fixed media by wireless media, and related to digital transformation as much as needing to understand the role 5G could play.  

Starting the exploration of 5G use cases (WP2) in a workshop setting was highly effective at bringing the ET and GT teams together to capture initial thoughts and helping to align on priorities. As we dived deeper into the selected use cases in the Ideate phase (WP3), the change of methodology from the initially planned workshop to a series of interviews, proved really beneficial in facilitating a more extensive investigation of ET and GT’s use cases and associated benefits. The interviews also helped us to identify new use cases and dependencies that emerged across different areas of work. 

The learnings on workforce management digitalisation and potential savings benefits could support CBA development.