Interoperability of electricity distribution and communication networks in large-scale outage situations

Today, electricity distribution and communication networks are getting more tightly integrated as smart grids evolve. From time to time, extreme weather conditions such as severe wind and snow storms cause large outages in electricity distribution networks in Northern countries. Loss of electricity can hinder remote control of grid entities and causes a chain-effect that jeopardizes energy generation, transmission, and distribution. Energy companies are seeking for resilient, reliable and cost-effective wireless communication solutions for rural areas to enable remote control and monitoring of medium voltage (MV) grid entities. Our motivation was to study how advanced mobile network functionalities can improve the mutual resiliency of communications and electricity distribution networks, and how they can be used to speed up the recovery. This paper presents the developed Overlay Recovery Control Function (ORCF) algorithm that uses different recovery techniques available in LTE-A and beyond to minimize mobile coverage gaps created during large outages.