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Solutions For Power
Utilities
Power utilities require rugged and reliable, instant communications
to link all facilities and staff 24/7. In this sector communications has
to meet the highest demands regarding safety, responsiveness and flexibility.
The credentials
of any communications solution for utility companies must be tried and tested
and able to work in extreme environments without any outages.
Utility Communications can deliver customized voice and data mobile radio
products and solutions suited to even the most demanding utilities environments.
MPT1327 – A Utility Grade
Narrow Band Open Standard
MPT1327 infrastructure and subscriber units work under the new 12.5Khz
channel banding guidelines for 2010.
MPT1327 is the worlds most commonly used communication standard for trunked
radio. The standard was born in the 80’s and continues to be developed
today. Unlike newer standards MPT is tried and trusted throughout the world
in hostile utility environments. MPT1327 has all the benefits of digital
signaling with the clarity of analogue voice. The benefits are wide area
radio coverage
with
the minimum amount of infrastructure. Data services such as AVL, Job dispatch
and messaging is all possible through the network without additional carriers.
Distributed call processing ensures safety and efficiency is never compromised.
Fylde’s MPT1327 radio trunking and Ceragons Fibreair backhaul products
are tried and tested throughout the utility sectors and petrochemical industries.
To meet the highest demand for instant communications Fylde infrastructure
allows for
multiple channel and link failure whilst still providing a high grade
of
service. This is known as gradual degradation. Fylde Supertrunk controllers
detect incidents
such as antenna failure and repeater power loss, Controllers instantly
re-route calls to available channels in milliseconds.
Berkeley Electric
Coop 
BEC is an Electrical Co-op serving over 64,000 members in Berkeley, Charleston
and Dorchester counties with over 4,000 miles of line connecting them all together.
This makes BEC the largest electric cooperative in South Carolina, and one
of the top 20 in the nation.
BEC required a new radio system after a failed attempt at 220MHz LM. The radio
system being implemented consists of six 220MHz FM 10KHz sites. For improved
workforce management, GPS modules were fitted into the TMC Radio SRM9030 series
radios. This GPS information is displayed upon the line connected AVL terminal.
The overall system has been built around a Fylde MPT1327 trunking system.
The protocol was chosen as it provides the most flexible platform
for future growth
and expansion. Additionally, the feature sets available directly allow all
of the functionality expected by the customer to be implemented.
MPT1327 as a system
offers built in redundancy and graceful degradation as a standard. This system
allows for the system, should any component fail, continue to operate. Additionally,
MPT1327 and the associated cell extenders are only available in the MPT1327
trunking format.
The base station equipment has been chosen from RF Technology for high reliability.
The repeaters offer external metering and alarms available to report the health
of their operation directly into the Fylde MPT1327 controllers. These alarms
and monitoring points are available for processing at the central control point
by Fylde designed Syscon.
http://www.becsc.com
Diverse
Power – LaGrange
Georgia
Diverse power operates a Electric Co-op based in Lagrange,
GA serving 6 counties including one (1) county in Alabama. Currently
the Co-op relies on a combination of cellular phones and a legacy trunking
system for communications in the aforementioned service territory.
 Diverse
power is part of a consortium of CO-OP utilities which participated in
220MHz frequency auctions in the
late 90’s.
The original system operated with a extremely narrowband ASSB technology
which never fully matured. Coverage into the many areas around the service
territory and the need for user intervention to manually change radio
sites drove the need for a new system. Additionally, a plan for system
wide talk groups needed to be implemented allowing for all radios to
be communicated with should the need arise.
http://www.diversepower.com
DEMCO- Dixie
Electric Membership Corporation
DEMCO supplies reliable electric service to over 96,903
locations, providing new and innovative ideas to the membership, and
sustaining a continued commitment to our local community.
Service to the consumers of DEMCO begins with a modern system of transmission
and distribution facilities with the capacity and reliability to turn
the wheels of the largest industrial user.
The system includes either metering points for wholesale power and 33
substations for system reliability. The primary voltage is 69 kV with
230 kV metering points and substation facilities available. The distribution
system primary voltages are 14.4/24.9 kV and 7.62/13.2 kV. DEMCO also
provides two mobile substations of 20 mVA and 10 mVA capacity. The electrical
system is continually monitored by a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisitions
system (SCADA) to detect system failures.
DEMCO began in the 90’s deploying on of the nation’s largest
220 LM radio networks, which due to failed technology never was fully
realized. The system originally was to cove r the utilities service territory
and surrounding areas with over 20 sites required. One the implementation
was converted to FM, the service territory was covered with only 6.
The use of ultra-narrowband FM technology allows 5KHz 220MHz channels
to be aggregated into 10KHz blocks for efficient operation.
DEMCO currently operates a 6 site trunking system offering communications
to the entire service territory. This infrastructure utilizes 6GHz microwave
and utility owned fiber for connection to the remote facilities. Once
deployed, DEMCO realized the full benefit of a highly reliable, specially
designed communications infrastructure when Hurricane Katrina pummeled
the Louisiana Deep South. The network remained a viable resource for
critical communications throughout the entire event.
The further improve the management of the mobile workforce, Automatic
Vehicle Location (AVL) utilizing signals from GPS was added with modules
deigned to be directly installed into the mobile transceiver. The integration
into the mobile was further made efficient by special firmware designed
by Fylde for direct control of the GPS module.
The mobile data capabilities of the Fylde network are fully being realized
by the implementation of Automated outage reporting. The application
was customer developed by a partnership between the end user and Fylde.
http://www.demco.org/
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