Nearly 150 years ago, in the early days of telecommunications, access to telephone service for most users was limited to shared circuits in which multiple subscribers shared a single phone line.
These so-called “party lines” offered lower costs but no privacy. Eavesdropping was not only commonplace but also the source of high-profile controversy.
Party line lore includes the University of Mississippi football coach overhearing his opponent, the coach of the University of Tennessee, outlining their strategy ahead of a game in December 1942. In separate instances, a handful of illegal bookmakers were shut down in the 50s and 60s after police quite easily listened in to conversations on a shared line.
The last remaining party lines were decommissioned in the U.S. in the late 1980s. Telecommunication, as we know, has come a long way in the last century-and-a-half, too, while individual, and wireless, phones are viewed as a necessity, not a luxury.
The electric utility industry is on a similar, albeit less extreme, journey.
For years, utilities relied on networks owned and operated by the same third-party telecommunication firms that offer cellular service to millions: AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and U.S. Cellular, to name a few. And while utilities weren’t at risk of customers listening to their calls, à la the party line, they were sharing limited bandwidth with the masses and could be subjected to the same outages as their customers.
The energy transition demanded utilities take control of their telecommunication infrastructure. Many, among them San Diego Gas & Electric, Evergy, Ameren, Xcel Energy, Tampa Electric, and Southern Company, have turned to private LTE networks for internal communications, as well as the management of millions of devices in the field, like sensors, smart meters, and digital substations. And it’s not just the big investor-owned utilities, either: Last year, Lower Colorado River Authority became the first non-IOU to jump on board.
They partner with firms like Anterix, which secures spectrum access from the Federal Communications Commission and leases portions of it to utilities. The company claims to be a “utility-first” solutions provider with the largest holding of the 900 MHz band in the U.S.
“Private, to me, means control,” Ryan Gerbrandt, Anterix’s chief commercial officer, told POWERGRID International. “How many people do you think know that utilities are operating some of the largest telecom networks in the country? I bet you very few.”
Watch the full interview on YouTube
Networks are not new to utilities. But the golden child of the latest evolution is Southern Company, which deployed the first private LTE network by a utility in 2016.
The journey began in 2010 as Southern Linc assessed whether or not its SCADA system, powered by a Motorola iDEN network, would meet the forthcoming needs of the grid in 2020. The company looked to the market for answers but kept coming up short, according to Alan McIntyre, Southern Linc’s engineering director.
Ultimately, Southern Linc decided LTE was the most suitable technology to serve its data needs of the future, which would go on to triple the estimates laid out more than a decade ago.
“That was one of the benefits of having LTE,” McIntyre said. “It really didn’t matter, honestly.”
Now fully built out, the network offers Southern Company the flexibility and security critical to a utility navigating the energy transition.
And while a far cry from the shared party lines of the 19th century, utilities across the country have been eavesdropping on Southern’s successes.
“Having (Southern Linc) as the trailblazers has been fantastic to be able to help drive and educate,” Gerbrandt said. “We all get mutual benefits from that over time as the knowledge pool expands.”
