Investor Owned Power Companies generate, transmit and distribute electricity for sale to wholesale and retail customers, generally in a market regulated by local or national authorities. The communications networks operated by these mission critical operators are now more vital than ever.
Prepare for the Future
When it comes to the Utilities industry, increased reliability and compatibility with the present and flexibility for the future is ever-important. Power Utilities across the globe are currently faced with some of the biggest challenges they have ever seen.
With Smart Grid, FERC, and NERC – we understand your business is changing. NERC is requiring better operational management and security, the market is putting pressure on operation expense and the need for efficiency and scalability and management wants to optimize grid operations. These drivers are forcing a modernization of the utility communications infrastructure.
Today’s communication infrastructure that connects substations to control centers consists of a variety of unprotected facilities – leased lines, wireless and dial up. Devices in substations are connected to communications servers with costly interfaces. The result is high cost and complexity and low flexibility and reliability.
They need to improve environmental performance, ensure affordable pricing and increase system reliability. Driven by new user demand, further regulatory pressures and the need to include distributed supply from renewable resources, Power Utilities are looking towards Smart Grids for increased efficiency and profitability.
Utilities are looking to leverage new technologies and applications to meet these ever-increasing demands on their grid operations and infrastructure. This means evolving from traditional SONET networks to more flexible Ethernet and IP approaches, with the security and bandwidth offered by advanced DWDM platforms.
LightRiver’s accumulated Smart Utility Networking solution portfolio and Lab offers a flexible and future-proof communications network to help you meet your business goals, and ensure your grid applications perform securely and reliably with products and technology specifically selected to address your challenges.
Migrating from a traditional centralized infrastructure to a distributed and dynamic Smart Grid is no small task. The number of devices and locations that need to effectively communicate with one another has increased dramatically. New regulation requires the underlying network meets stringent availability and security demands. It also needs to synchronize distributed processes and this requires accurate timing information across each site.
Find out more about how LightRiver applications maximize Smart Grid efforts and modernize your utility infrastructure. Contact our team today.
Better Networks, Faster.
It’s possible with LightRiver.