How to keep talking when the power goes out

Secure, reliable and resilient – these are the necessary hallmarks of a future telecommunications system for the utilities sector and Ian Smith, logistics manager at National Grid Electricity Distribution, believes he knows how to achieve this.

In the face of “seismic changes” for the energy sector, as it moves from passive to dynamic networks and steels itself for increasing extreme weather events, this kind of agile but robust communications system will only become more important.

According to Smith, the answer is a move towards Long-Term Evolution (LTE), a private mobile phone network which he argued would provide communications in the utilities sector with much-needed resilience.

It will not be cheap, with an estimate of around £1 billion to cover NGED’s network, yet Smith believes the system will tick all the boxes of what is needed from a resilient communications system.

Setting the scene at last month’s Utility Week Forum, Smith highlighted how the current landscape consists of a “technology mix”.

“We don’t rely on a single system because that introduces a single point of failure,” he explained.

The mix includes a number of technologies such as, for example, satellite and fibre. Both of these are costly and the latter is disruptive to install.

There are also the “very affordable” radio networks, but these are restricted to the amount of data they can carry, as well as fixed link, additional point to point communications which Smith described as being “a bit like fibre”, but not as powerful.

He further spoke about the extremely resilient Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).

“Believe it or not, the oldest comms system we’ve got in the UK is the most resilient to power failure. Satellite will go off, fibre will go off, PSTN will stay on,” he said, but pointed out this network is due to shut down in 2025.

The public cellular network is a part of the mix as well but, as Smith observed: “Mobile phones in Storm Arwen went off. The average resilience in a mobile phone mast is about 20 minutes.

“There is no requirement for a mobile telephone operator to build in power resiliency into their mobile phone networks.

“So not only do you get the congestion on New Year’s Eve, when everybody’s trying to do their video call from wherever they are in the world, you also get the fact that if the power goes off, it will go off.”

This current technology mix has served the “passive” network well, Smith conceded, but a dynamic network will be one which contains a growing number of assets that need to be managed by network operators, resulting in the need for more robust communication systems.

These will need to be cybersecure he said, adding: “So from a cybersecurity point of view, we have to design it in, we’re not going to be able to design that in if we’re thinking about using commercial networks.”

LTE

Smith, who is chair of the Energy Networks Association’s strategic telecoms group, said that all the UK’s gas and electricity distributors had “identified and agreed on the necessity for a new communications platform”.

Going forward, he said, the sector will need a system that is cost effective and scalable. For Smith the future of communications in the utilities sector lies with LTE.

“It’s not quite as powerful as 5G, it’s not good for streaming Netflix. But it’s powerful enough to do voice, video, data, and it’d be highly available. It’s a proven technology.”

Yet when asked for a ballpark cost figure, Smith said “we’re definitely up around the billion mark”.

Despite this, he believes that the system is highly economically viable, claiming if costs were socialised across all consumers, “we are talking pennies in terms of what it means to a bill paying customer”.

Another benefit of LTE is that it can be built on existing utility operator land or assets.

Smith continued: “We have a lot of substations in the electricity industry. So we’ve already got land, we don’t have to let the mobile network start having to negotiate with farmers to put new masts in, we can use our existing sites. And it’s capable of being shared…if required, this technology is capable of having other utilities on that platform too, it doesn’t have to be restricted.”

He further highlighted how the technology is being used by multiple countries across the world including the United States, Spain, Portugal and Brazil.

No silver bullet

Although keen to point out the benefits of installing an LTE network Smith said it is not a “silver bullet” and that other technologies still need to be considered as part of the mix.

“So for me to put fibre everywhere would be wasting bill payers money and is probably over engineering the solution. But fibre is in the mix. I do have fibre in my business, I do have satellite in my business and I do have mobile networks.

“But fibre, satellite and mobile will go off when the power goes off. Private LTE won’t and when you’re running a dynamic network like that, a smart network which is going to be growing beyond 2030, this is where the resiliency comes in if we’re going to protect UKPLC.”

Next steps

Going forward, Smith said he and the strategic communications group are working with Ofgem and BEIS and that they were making “good headway”, but that setting up a frequency purely for utility sector use is a policy decision for the government.

“It will be secure, it will be reliable, resilient to power failure, it’ll have geographical coverage because it’s going where the utilities want it, not where the commercial operators want it. It will be scalable…It will be accessible by multi utilities. I’m already talking gas and electric, it’s got the potential to go further than that. And it will be cost effective,” he added.