Reliable voice and data for power

Bernd Wintergerst, Head of Information Technology with AllgäuNetz

“Big data’ is a very big topic for us. We are receiving more data from the grid because we have a lot of decentralised power plants and they are sending information back to the centre.”

What does your organisation do and how do you use PMR?

We are an electrical distribution grid operator in the Allgäu region of southern Germany. We are responsible for the sustainable and viable operation of our electricity grid across the region. It’s a very urban area near the borders with Austria and Switzerland., with many mountains and attracting large numbers of tourists.

We use PMR for both voice and data communications. First, it’s very important for us to have reliable voice communications and second, we use data to control our power grid. That’s different from some of the other major users of PMR here in Germany, because we are using it separately for voice and data communications.

So the voice communications take place between the grid control centre and our people doing all the network maintenance. We don’t use data for this workforce management at all. Instead the data communications is used to get information in and out of the grid itself through TETRA modems. In urban areas without optical cable we get all the measurements from the grid via data and we also use it to steer and operate the grid.

How important is communication for a critical infrastructure provider such as AllgäuNetz?

It’s very critical that we can always communicate with the power network, even if the public phone networks are down. That’s the main reason we have our own PMR network. We have buffered base stations with our own power supplies, so we can still rely on them in the event of a blackout.

What about data?

We have around 80 modems in the network and the way the network is evolving to use more renewable energy makes it more and more important to have multiple secure data connections with the grid.
‘Big data’ is a very big topic for us. We are receiving more and more data from the grid because we have a lot of decentralised power plants in our region and they’re all sending information back to the grid centre. Photovoltaic solar power plants are common and we also have water and wind. It’s a real mixture. Every decentralised power plant delivers measurements to us and the amount of data is growing. We need a secure way to transfer it all.

Apart from the trend towards more decentralised electricity generation, are there other key trends that look set to impact the need for communications across the electricity supply grid?

More and more people are starting to use electric cars and they need a lot of power. We have a lot of stations appearing where cars can be charged – it’s an important aspect of the smart city. We don’t need to do it yet, but in the future, we may need to get measurements out of those vehicle charging stations to help us manage the supply in order to keep all those vehicles running and minimise their impact on the grid.

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The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Airbus.