18 January 2023
National Grid undertakes fibre network monitoring pilot
EXFO has announced that National Grid has selected EXFO for an innovative pilot scheme to provide monitoring for its ongoing fibre network health assessment in the UK, supporting the UK’s goal of becoming net-zero by 2050.
National Grid has deployed an overhead fibre optic operational telecommunications network across its electricity transmission infrastructure that carries critical information essential for secure and efficient utility operations. EXFO’s technology will help assess the operational condition of the fibre network, while predicting its remaining technical lifespan and identifying potential points of weakness or failure.
EXFO will also collect data from Intellisense Systems micro weather station (MWS) Internet of Things (IoT) devices being deployed to measure the specific environmental impact of wind, humidity, and meteorological events. EXFO’s artificial intelligence (AI)-based analytics solution will amalgamate and correlate data from both the fibre optic network and weather system inputs, and dynamically predict, detect, and prevent outages and impairments in the network that might otherwise go unnoticed.
National Grid anticipates that EXFO’s proactive monitoring and fault detection can deliver a net benefit of as much as £2.9 million derived from failure avoidance and extending the lifespan of the existing network.
EXFO will measure, analyse, and report results from an 80km span of the National Grid network over a 12-month period. Deployment of test equipment and Intellisense devices got underway in October 2022.
“EXFO is pleased to support a national-level provider like the National Grid. Our remote, proactive fibre testing and monitoring solution provides complete visibility across the fibre network, with capabilities to predict and detect potential outages in real time. Coupled with weather sensing equipment, we can help ensure network reliability so the lights stay on for everyone,” said Wim te Niet, vice president, EMEA, EXFO.
“Operational telecommunications networks are an important part of our critical national infrastructure and play a key role in enabling our transition to a net zero economy by 2050. Large parts of our fibre network are reaching an age where failures may become more frequent and more difficult to address. We are therefore exploring new ways to monitor and model fibre health and its evolution over time to enable optimised planning of refurbishment and replacement interventions,” said Tom Charton, senior innovation engineer at the National Grid.
