Utilities, long the byword of technological stagnation, have embraced digital transformation with a bang! Their massive appetite for the spectrum is only one indicator of the break from the past.
The ownership of telecommunications assets uniquely positions utilities to capitalize on the private network opportunity. They already own vast swathes of the 900 MHz spectrum and geographic reach into rural and urban neighborhoods. They can also reuse their telecom and physical assets such as towers and light poles to deploy small cells to reach their customers for innovative city applications. They can also provide Network-as-a-Service to smaller utilities.
Spectrum and Adoption of Private Networks
Insufficient spectrum availability for contiguous regions has been a significant barrier to adopting private networks in utilities. In recent years, Anterix has played the role of a broker by accumulating spectrum and leasing them to individual utilities. Following its acquisition of the Sprint 900 Mhz spectrum in 2014, it controls 60 percent of it.
Much of the 900 MHz spectrum until May 2020 was for narrowband purposes. After that, FCC has permitted some of it for broadband communications. Anterix has been evangelizing private networks in utilities and will use it to promote their growth.
Digital Services for Utilities
Utilities want a slew of digital services, and security is on the top of the list. Recurring cyber-attacks on the critical infrastructure, including the utility industry, has been a rude awakening. The hackers are also priming for attacking sensitive control systems. In the past, utilities have deployed multiple telecom networks within their sub-systems, making it hard to track the movements of cyber threats across the entire utility. Private networks allow viewing all their operations from a single vantage point of a portal.
Protection against wildfires and other weather devastations is another use case for private networks. The specter of liability lawsuits looms over utilities as wildfires have rattled residents in the vicinity.
Monitoring the grid in real-time with sensors has gained urgency as utilities see prevention as the means to stem catastrophic losses. They have concluded that they need visibility into the daily operations of their sprawling grids to spot risks such as a simmering fire due to a car accident.
Smart grids have increased the need for granular monitoring as monolithic legacy networks are sub-divided into smaller micro-grids, typically around renewable energy production and consumption. These grids bring power generation closer to consumption points such as wind farms feeding electricity to electric car recharging stations. In addition, they want to use IoT-generated data to redistribute excess supply to units where demand fulfillment is falling short such as with Verizon’s Grid-wide utility solutions.
Use Cases for Utilities
Vulnerabilities of utility assets start small as crawling vegetation and smidgens of rust spread and culminate with collapses under the stress of hurricanes, wildfires, and more. One survey by a utility, PrecisionHawk, concluded that 77 percent of its poles were prone to topple in a storm. The human eye is unlikely to spot the chinks in the assets and the latent breakdowns, especially when they are outside its field of vision. Increasingly, utilities, like New York Power Authority, see in the camera vision of drones and thermal imaging as the means to monitor assets and take pre-emptive action before their weaknesses snowball into catastrophe.
Failed powerlines ignite wildfires when they fall on the ground and come in contact with trees. San Diego Gas and Electric uses its private network to detect a fallen powerline and turn it off before it causes a wildfire.
Cyber-security
Cyber-security is a crucial use case for utilities, especially those at advanced levels of digital transformation. Digital connections at several transmission and distribution levels within utility labyrinths expose them to cybersecurity risks. Fortunately, standards bodies have been vigilant and written standards at granular levels to checkmate hackers. The rub is in its implementation. Unfortunately, public networks never implement them. Private networks afford much greater control to enforce security policies for the needs of utilities.
Distributed Electricity Grid
Electricity grids are dealing with more volatile demand and supply of electricity in local markets. On the demand side, the rapid adoption of electric vehicles increases demand in the suburbs, the locations of most of their owners. In addition, the automation of manufacturing increases the demand for electricity in industrial estates or regions outside of metropolitan areas. On the supply side, increasing recourse to renewable energy leads to wide fluctuations in availability from many different sources. Utilities are creating microgrids in an attempt to balance demand and supply in local regions. Hence, there is an increasing need to monitor and control demand and supply in real-time. Grids are getting restructured to meet the demand of this new era. Think tank Edison recognizes the need for 5G Private Networks for the operation of distributed and digitized utilities.
Private Network Deployments and Technological Innovation in Utilities
Ameren is one of the first utilities to install a private network. It gained efficiencies as it replaced twenty different telecom networks with one. The elimination of intermediate gateways and direct communication between devices improved the efficiencies of its line and load management platform.
Siemens’s private network deployment for one of its micro-grids in Vienna, Austria, is an example of managing power load fluctuations locally. Aided by cloud-hosted software, the microgrid directs excess electricity to points of consumption. Nokia will supply the equipment for the private network for the grid, which will generate 320kW of solar power and have 500kWh of battery storage to support 50 EV charging stations.
In a world of renewable energy, the supply of electricity spikes unexpectedly with weather changes. Utilities need real-time data to track the fluctuations in demand and supply of electricity. Vodafone is providing network slices, on its 5G Standalone network, to the Constellation project of UK Power Networks for each of the computers in its sub-stations to communicate with each other to configure its networks to respond to dynamic changes.
New York Power Authority (NYPA) has collaborated with Anterix for its Gilboa, New York, hydroelectric plant. Among the use cases is the processing of vast amounts of data generated by theutility’s Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems. In addition, the project is expected to increase the capacity utilization of its multiple systems.
Western Distribution is creating a private network to connect to its 200,000 sub-stations. These will be centers of is operating hubs that will aggregate data for individual regions. For these operating hubs, Western Distribution is creating markets for the production and consumption of electricity by making real-time data transparent. The private network that will help aggregate data to make electricity markets transparent is under construction in collaboration with Nokia,
Conclusions
Utilities are migrating from a largely hardware-based industry to an intelligence and software-defined industry. Its sheer size and the need for automation of load management, maintenance, and upkeep, and increasing diversity of demand and supply create the need for data, analytics, and control.
Digital utilities are also now exposed to devastating cybersecurity risks and weather events. Private networks are helping them close access to adversaries and implement protocols to prevent intrusion.
