EnergyAustralia plans LTE smart grid network
EnergyAustralia has contracted Ericsson to supply, initially, WiMAX equipment to support a WIMAX network for its smart grid rollout, but says it will later upgrade this to LTE. The network will connect some 150 EnergyAustralia sites in Sydney, Central Coast and Hunter and will transmit data between 12,000 smart monitoring devices, up to 3000 mobile field computers and 200 major zone substations. EnergyAustralia's Smart Grid, Smart City project covers five locations: Newcastle, Scone, Ku-ring-gai, Newington and Sydney CBD. EnergyAustralia managing director, George Maltabarow, said: "We are now rolling out a WiMAX communications network and will begin trials of an LTE platform at 15 sites next year, with the plan to move to a full LTE network. By using the same LTE technology as mobile carriers, we will benefit from economies of scale for chip, device and equipment pricing as 3G networks around the world migrate to LTE." Under the agreement, Ericsson as prime integrator will provide equipment, software and services to operate the network at 150 sites. Ericsson will supply Airspan Networks' WiMAX equipment. Ericsson said it would "leverage the Melbourne-based Ericsson Global LTE Competence Centre, and Ericsson's deep local expertise in network design, planning and integration."
