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While the conventional electrical grid was a “one-way” system, “smarter” two-way grids provide distributors and suppliers with early warning of system breakdowns and local fluctuations in electricity demand.
Fremont, CA: Satellite-enabled solutions that provide utilities with ‘always on’ connectivity were often thought to be prohibitively expensive or unduly reliant on large infrastructure, but that has all changed in recent years. The latest satellite technologies provide ubiquitous connectivity at a low cost and serve as a highly reliable backup communications system when terrestrial networks fail.
Utility firms must be able to satisfy fluctuating consumer demand, respond dynamically to surges, minimize downtime, and provide a high level of service that enhances people’s lives. The transition to a distributed-generation, low-carbon economy, which is redefining how power is produced and consumed by end-users worldwide, exacerbates these difficulties.
While the conventional electrical grid was a “one-way” system, “smarter” two-way grids provide distributors and suppliers with early warning of system breakdowns and local fluctuations in electricity demand. This gives grid administrators the information they need to optimize the network’s performance, ensuring that they can handle peak loads and predict supply disruptions.
According to the three core applications mentioned above, the most important smart grid application is centralized, automated reclosers, which allow utility companies to sense and interrupt currents in the event of a fault, giving them the tools to reconfigure the network to isolate faults and restore supply automatically.
Because today’s utility businesses rely on these technologies to make their distribution of smart grids more flexible, reliable, resilient, and secure, their communications networks must have the same characteristics. Traditional radio and cellular-based technologies’ cost and reliability constraints in enabling remote SCADA systems are becoming increasingly evident in this setting. Simply said, a grid manager’s ability to diagnose problems and dynamically respond to power outages is severely limited by an unstable communications backbone (especially in remote and rural locations).
A lack of availability and dependable terrestrial connectivity is a significant impediment to expanding your network’s capabilities and taking advantage of smart grid applications and solutions. Smart meters or digital sensors and switches, for example, cannot be improved (or are just not possible) without reliable connectivity.
The latest cost-effective satellite technologies and robust, reliable terminals are ideal for backhauling data from smart grid applications installed anywhere in the power grid, giving grid managers an easy-to-integrate, real-time, IP-based connectivity service and giving them greater command and control over their entire network. First, however, utility firms must understand the differences and limits of various satellite systems at this time.
