During the Africa Energy Forum, Chinese telecommunications technology equipment company Huawei and several African power customers released the fine-grained Optical Transport Network (fgOTN) White Paper for Electric Power (hereinafter referred to as the white paper), providing suggestions for African electric power companies on the construction of a next-generation power communication network.

In recent years, with the deepening of digitalisation in the electric power industry, AI models have been popular, and many new services have emerged in the electric power industry. On the other hand, synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH), as a traditional power communication network technology, is facing the problem that the technology evolution stops and the devices on the live network gradually retire from the network.

Based on the preceding information, the white paper released this time will provide a reference architecture and network construction suggestions for the "next-generation power communication network construction" based on the latest fgOTN technology.

According to the white paper, as new technologies are continuously integrated with electric power services, the new power communication network needs to be fully automated, digitalised and smartened. It realises that centralised and unattended power grid operation and inspection promotes market-orientated electric power transactions and office digitalisation for enterprises, and improves the capabilities of observing, describing and controlling power grids.  Therefore, the industry needs a communication technology with larger bandwidth, higher communication efficiency, and more flexible architecture to carry operating technology, information technology, and Internet services of electric power.

The fgOTN is a small-granularity hard pipe technology based on the OTN standard system. The fgOTN technology provides the electric power industry with a secure hard isolation solution based on rigid hard pipes. In addition, the small-granularity hard pipe technology improves bandwidth utilisation, meeting the current and future development requirements of the power communication network.

Huawei Southern Africa Region Optical Product Director Luo Xin said, "fgOTN is a new technology defined by ITU-T. It inherits the security and stability features of SDH and has the advantages of OTN, meeting the requirements of power systems. In addition, CIGRE set up the D2.65 working group in April to study the application of fgOTN in the electric power industry. Based on the preceding information, we hope that by releasing the white paper, more electric power customers can understand the fgOTN and use the fgOTN to build the next-generation power communication network.”

For more information about the white paper, please visit:

https://e.huawei.com/en/material/optical/0673b498f2344a858cf3cb9898cda88c