6th Jun 2019

Reliable communications play a crucial role in shortening power cuts

Take a moment and imagine this: a wide 12-hour power cut in a large city. Complete chaos. What is the reason behind the power cut? What are the effects? What are the costs? And can this situation be avoided in the future?

Reasons for this kind of malfunctions in the electricity network can be, for instance, the imbalance between the energy production and use, or a short circuit. In the threat scenario mentioned above, the imbalance has occurred because of a sudden consumption peak, combined with an outage of transmission line from the close by wind farm.

The operators of the grid are prepared for this kind situation with grid automation and remote control and monitoring. However, when their remote-control system tries to send the messages over fiber optic, the network is down. There are a number of reasons why this can happen: a configuration error, a security breach, a UPS power backup device fail or a road construction cutting the redundant path.

The situation escalates. Because the fiber optic failed, the remote control of the power transmission switchgear is not available. Thus, alternative power sources are not connected. Network’s frequency drops, and critical infrastructure starts to fail. In this scenario, the costs rise to millions of euros, and every minute increases the costs significantly.

Mission-critical connectivity is the key

Network problems can be resolved in a fast and reliable way by using mission-critical radio connectivity. SATEL’s radio technology is ultrareliable and uses only independent, highly secure connections. The data transfer system switches to a spare connection automatically in a few seconds, if problems occur. Radio technology offers high availability under all circumstances in mission-critical communications.

Read more about our SATEL XPRS solution >

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