To validate and confirm the technologies are capable of supporting smart grids;
- Providing wide geographic coverage in a range of environments from dense urban to deep rural
- Providing reliable performance generally (>99.99%) and also during a black start event
- Providing communication with sufficiently low latency to support real time control of distributed assets as part of the smart grid
- A high degree of interoperability between connectivity technology and equipment vendors
To demonstrate to what extent third party solutions from mobile operators can be relied upon in terms of coverage and performance
To build upon output of previous innovation projects such as WPD’s Falcon & Nexus and UKPN’s ‘Flexible plug and play’ which focussed on a single technology solution or were desktop only exercises.
To satisfy Ofcom’s requirements to justify access to an additional 400 MHz allocation as part of the spectrum release programme
Objectives
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To validate and confirm the technologies are capable of supporting smart grids;
- Providing wide geographic coverage in a range of environments from dense urban to deep rural
- Providing reliable performance generally (>99.99%) and also during a black start event
- Providing communication with sufficiently low latency to support real time control of distributed assets as part of the smart grid
- A high degree of interoperability between connectivity technology and equipment vendors
To demonstrate to what extent third party solutions from mobile operators can be relied upon in terms of coverage and performance
To build upon output of previous innovation projects such as WPD’s Falcon & Nexus and UKPN’s ‘Flexible plug and play’ which focussed on a single technology solution or were desktop only exercises.
To satisfy Ofcom’s requirements to justify access to an additional 400 MHz allocation as part of the spectrum release programme
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Providing a model for a cost effective solution that is financially viable and can be scaled at a modest & predictable incremental cost.
Learnings
Outcomes
The project has since completed, and the Deployment of the LTE solution has become Bau within SPEN. It has shown to have a great reliability and availability along with the its plug and play type set up we are able to scale the system with requirements of the business.
As discussed above the Broadband Powerline solution shows promising results on the original testing of the telecoms technology as it’s a natural fit for Urban UG networks. However, there are issues regarding a standard coupler to be manufactured for the RMU type networks used on the UK. The coupler discussion is ongoing with our internal standards teams and manufacturers. The solution was trialled in a controlled environment and would need further test in the live network to determine feasibility and practicality.
Other Technologies Investigated as part of this project are P2MP Digital Radio which is part of the ongoing deployment and Satellite technologies which requires further works to trail and prove, this was paused due to poor data rates and high costs.
Lessons Learnt
Throughout the project we have tried to build upon previous projects and meet the criteria defined above. One of the take away lessons we have seen is when the power is out for an extended period of time there could be issues with reaching the remote equipment, which ties into the black start situation, this is due to the plant battery back up being insufficient for greater than 3 days and the similar situation for the cellular base stations deployed.
The other learning point for BPL shows promise for deployment, however difficult has arisen from specifying a coupling device for the UK market that meets all the requirements. This is still ongoing to allow further development and rollout.
