Huawei Helps Thailand PEA Evolve its Transmission and Transformation Network to Accelerate Digital Transformation

Huawei Helps Thailand PEA Evolve its Transmission and Transformation Network
to Accelerate Digital Transformation

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 requirementsof 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."

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Link to Original Article:
http://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/Huawei-Helps-Thailand-PEA-Evo
lve-its-Transmission-and-Transformation-Network-to-Accelerate-Digital-Transf
ormation-1002225755

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John Diecker
APT Consulting Group Co., Ltd.

www.aptthailand.com