Huawei Transform PEA Transmission Network Thailand

After thoroughly analyzing Provincial Electricity Authority (PEA)’s requirements, Huawei developed a unified transmission solution customized specifically for PEA. The solution enabled PEA’s transmission and transformation network to be upgraded using customized network migration tools, entering a new stage.

“PEA’s modernized power transmission and transformation network provided by Huawei enables unified production and office services, reliable transmission of critical services, and electric power services to be migrated to all-IP network in the future. It delivers powerful performance and scalability to meet our future service requirements of the next three to five years.” Supatat Inkhow, Regional Manager, Network Communication Department, PEA

Background

Thailand attracts millions of tourists from across the world every year. Both Phuket Island and Chiang Mai are illuminated by beautiful lights at night, which depend on consistent power supply provided by the PEA, Thailand’s largest electric power company.

PEA provides electricity power services for 17 million customers across Thailand, it has 512 substations and 914 offices, and offers power transmission of up to 10,173 cct-km, and optical fibers of 24,000 km.

Challenges

With Smart Grid delivering greater efficiency, traditional power companies need to embrace digital transformation. PEA’s early communications network for power transmission and transformation could no longer meet the demand for new IP-based services. Some equipment vendors had stopped providing boards and chips required for the existing grid, making it difficult to source spare parts and driving higher O&M costs.

In addition, old SDH devices couldn’t provide sufficient bandwidth for new services. Some existing services, such as SCADA, could run on IP networks, but PEA’s existing infrastructure impeded network evolution. These challenges prompted PEA to upgrade its network.

Solution

PEA wanted to deploy ICT to enable Smart Grid, capturing future digital opportunities. One of key priorities was to evolve its power transmission and transformation network, as the backbone of Smart Grid.

In 2014, Huawei recommended PEA consider a network upgrading, based on its deep understanding of the power industry and PEA’s business. Huawei assured PEA that many critical production and PCM services of the existing network could be moved to new network without affecting service quality and security. In addition, Huawei recognized that the new network needed to be flexible and scalable to accommodate new PEA services.

After thoroughly analyzing PEA’s requirements, Huawei developed a unified transmission solution customized specifically for PEA. The solution enabled PEA’s network to be upgraded using customized network migration tools, dual-domain bridging technology.

With this solution, PEA’s transmission and transformation network has entered a new stage:

• Seamless, secure, and reliable interconnection between old and new network to ensure smooth network evolution

Huawei used customized migration tools to ensure the continuous availability of PEA’s critical services. The tools enable access to new services and provide spare parts servicing for up to 10 years to ensure smooth network evolution.

• Soft and hard pipes for unified carrying of production and office services to meet future needs

TDM services, such as dispatch telephone and relay protection, are carried by mature and reliable SDH hard pipes to ensure low latency and jitter. Bandwidth-hungry services, such as office automation, are carried by MPLS-TP soft pipes to fully utilize network resources and ensure flexible and efficient transmission. This combination of hard and soft pipes supports PEA’s strategic evolution towards all-IP networking.

• Built-in WDM and ultra-long-haul transmission technology simplifies network and reduces investment

To solve the existing network’s issue of insufficient optical fiber resources, the built-in WDM solution enables high-bandwidth transmission and conserves fiber resources by allowing one pair of fibers to uniformly carry multiple services. Furthermore, to accommodate multiple ultra-long-distance networks spanning 80 km to 200 km, Huawei applied built-in optical amplifiers to reduce the number of regeneration sites and minimize overall investment costs.

Benefits

Huawei’s unified transmission solution brought the following benefits to PEA:

• The customized solution for PEA leverages new technologies such as PCM and Smart 40G. The solution carries both electric production and office services to support smooth evolution towards an all-IP network, while ensuring highly reliable transmission of mission-critical services.
• Huawei’s professional technical teams planned the entire network, ensuring stable network operations. Ultra-high bandwidth and flexible scalability will meet PEA’s service development needs over the next three to five years.
• Using Huawei’s solution, PEA has a stable network architecture that can accommodate future upgrades. This serves as an important example for power companies across the world who need to modernize their networks to drive digital transformation.

Huawei will continue to work closely with PEA to drive digital transformation. In 2016, Huawei and PEA initiated a strategic cooperation to create an innovation center to enable the two companies to develop breakthrough solutions.

Wang Yifan, General Manager of the Huawei’s Thailand office, said: “This innovation center is Huawei’s first innovation center for the electric power industry in the world. We have invested resources, personnel, and technologies. In the future, we will strengthen cooperation to effectively promote R&D practices and produce innovation results at an increasing speed to achieve win-win collaboration. This is part of Huawei’s active engagement in Thailand’s Smart City construction.”