PEA Lights up Thailand’s Future with Smart Grid through Huawei’s eLTE-DSA Solution
ผลิตภัณฑ์ โซลูชั่น และบริการสำหรับองค์กรธุรกิจ
Established in 1960, the Provincial Electricity Authority (PEA) is a Thai state enterprise under the Ministry of Interior, responsible for providing electricity services to more than 20.4 million users in 74 provinces — all except Bangkok, Samut Prakan, and Nonthaburi. Headquartered in Bangkok, PEA operates a total of 946 suboffices spreading out across the four regions of Thailand; North, Northeast, Central and South, to ensure optimal electricity provision, management and maintenance.
In modern society, electricity has become an essential part of everyday life and business operations. PEA is committed to providing efficient, highly-reliable electricity services with the aim to improve the quality of life of Thai people and contribute to the country’s socio-economic development.
Under its mission to become a smart utility service provider through technology and innovations, PEA has been exploring new opportunities to elevate its operations and services to the next level of reliability and efficiency. Over the past few years, the organization has been focusing on enhancing its entire operations, including network infrastructure, communications system, and power-related services to meet the ever-increasing demand for power.
As the energy industry is leaning more towards technology to support future services and coverage expansion, PEA has been putting its best efforts to transform its grid — a network of transmission, substations, and transformers that generate, transmit and distribute electricity from a power plant to homes and businesses — into a smart one.
The organization realized that the journey towards a smart grid required an upgrade of its wireless communication infrastructure, including the SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) system. In the power industry, SCADA is used for controlling and monitoring power distribution, enabling accurate and timely fault detection as well as remote power management and maintenance. As the industry’s requirements are changing, the SCADA, along with other vital operations, must support wireless broadband connectivity and other telecommunications solutions.
PEA was met with a challenge as its legacy system was not built to support broadband services, making it impossible for the organization to implement smart solutions to increase its power service efficiency.
Based on extensive experience in cutting-edge wireless networking technologies, as well as its in-depth understanding of the power business, Huawei took PEA’s requirements into consideration and proposed the eLTE-DSA Solution for SCADA system. This 5G-compatible eLTE Discrete Spectrum Aggregation (eLTE-DSA) solution offers an all-in-one energy solution through fast wireless access, low latency, greater connectivity and reduced power consumption. Supporting shared-frequency networking, the solution was engineered to overcome the obstacles of traditional narrowband solutions where the system could not maximize the use of all frequency spectrum.
Already implemented across PEA’s suboffices nationwide, the project was Huawei’s first overseas eLTE-DSA adaptation outside China, a significant milestone for the tech company. The success was due to Huawei’s unique technology and its highly knowledgeable team of experts who worked closely with PEA to ensure the customized solution meets local requirements and PEA’s demands for ultra-fast monitoring and intelligent control service.
Following the implementation, PEA has been enjoying smarter and faster operations in terms of speed, capacity, security and reliability across services. The new system allowed PEA to quickly and accurately identify faults and address potential issues from anywhere, significantly reducing operation time and maintenance costs in the long run. The strong and expansion-ready infrastructure also means any future applications will be easily implemented to support future demands and requirements. As this project is the world’s first adaptation of eLTE-DSA solution outside China, the tailor-made solution and its specifications will be a practical model for future implementations in other countries.