The phone’s buzz hit like a skunk at a picnic. Al shot me the look—the one that said, “Why now?” I checked the text message and reached for my bag just as our daughter bounded off the pine and onto the hardwood like a one-woman, late-game calvary.
“Really?” said Al. He let the non-question hang, knowing both the answer and the reason why. “I thought this wasn’t going to happen so much anymore. Didn’t you say that?”
“Yes, but not until the network’s done,” I replied. “That’s what I said. Until then, this lady doesn’t rest.”
“Please let it be soon,” he grumbled, leaning to deliver a goodbye kiss. “You go make sure the lights stay on—I’ll try to handle things here.” He sighed to let me know he wasn’t entirely joking and let loose a half-hearted “HOOT!” for the Fightin’ Barn Owls. Down on the court, our fresh-faced, five-ten baby posted up on her six-foot opponent, all straining muscles and flying elbows. I winced at a mother’s premonition and made for the exit.
When I checked from the car, the forecast wasn’t too bad: some high gusts would bring down some trees, but it didn’t look like much—certainly not the howler we’d expected. The new network would enable a greater level of grid automation, but as long as we had to rely on the legacy communications systems, we had to staff the Network Operations Center , even for relatively minor events. Even though I couldn’t help much with those aging systems, I felt like as head of the team, I had to be there for moral support if nothing else. God, I couldn’t wait to get Distribution Ops off my back, always going to the boss when we lose communications. It was my job to get us completely off that hodgepodge of aging wireless systems and finish the transition to the modern broadband network.
The passenger’s side window filled with advancing thunderheads, slate-gray and closing fast; I instinctively sped up, like that would help anything. Of all the changes that came with my move from a regional cellular carrier to my hometown electric utility, being on-call all the time—and I mean all the time—was hardest to take. Ol’ Edison, my lead technician for the legacy networks, took it all in stride, actually thriving on the urgency and weighty responsibility that so burdened his personal life. Even so, my guilt grew with every passing month: as the only one left who could fix the legacy networks, Ed couldn’t retire until they did.
Hopefully, that glorious day wasn’t far off. We’d gone live with private LTE for almost the entire service territory, and with that coverage we transitioned critical grid management capabilities from the dozen or so single-purpose legacy networks to the multi-purpose, high-capacity, low-latency new network. The only problem was that we still had to rely on the legacy systems to connect in those few areas where we hadn’t yet turned on the private LTE network.
Once that was done, we could shut down the legacy networks and give Ed his freedom (if he’d take it), and all our AMI and SCADA would be riding LTE, as would our FLISR recloser application. We’d even implemented interoperability between the decades-old land mobile radio system and mission-critical push-to-talk over LTE networks. For me, though, those applications were really just table stakes. Our grid ops guys were pressing for direct transfer trip (for islanding), pole tilt sensing, and falling conductor protection (for wildfire mitigation)—all over the new private LTE network. Just last week, I got a call from our resource adequacy team, asking if the network had the capacity, low latency, and security necessary to carry communications between a virtual power plant controller and thousands of widely distributed residential and commercial “prosumers”; I gave him an enthusiastic YES. Same for coordination of EV charging, which we all knew was going to change everything. It seemed the closer we got to completing the new private LTE network, the more—and more forward-looking—applications people wanted to run over it.
Not exactly a shocking development, but give credit where due: years ago my bosses saw the future would depend on wireless broadband communications, and they stepped up. They procured dedicated spectrum, and they hired me to build a team that spoke LTE and 5G, LTE’s evolutionary successor. And now, we all—my bosses, our company, and our community—were starting to reap the benefits.
***
The mantrap door clicked shut behind me, and Ol’ Ed, still in his lure-adorned fishing hat, gave a wave without taking his eyes off the screen. Among the shiny desks and brilliant monitors of our brand-new NOC, Ed looked like he’d just beamed in from fifty years ago.
“Rolston Creek got hit first, lost a pole, and the other lines are galloping like crazy,” Ed announced. “But comms are holding—so far.” At the far edge of the service territory and bitter end of our network upgrade schedule, Rolston Creek had LTE, but its six substations hadn’t yet been cut over, still depending on our aging WiMax system. Ed had to watch it carefully—if we lost comms out there, he would have to get rolling.
I checked the monitors. LTE metrics looked good: congestion, latency, packet loss. If a sensor out on the grid sent data across the LTE system, I could tell it was getting where it had to go. And even in the highly unlikely event that the LTE network got congested, I knew it would prioritize and deliver the critical communications first. And if anything went wrong, LTE was a mature, standardized technology in broad use worldwide, so I had had no trouble assembling a capable team to keep the new private network in fine shape.
The storm moved fast, and it took a toll on the grid. The private network delivered data to the distribution ops team revealing damage throughout the service area, reports developed from SCADA, AMI, and FLISR data. This data, along with voltage, weather and physical security information provided distribution ops with a detailed picture of grid health and situational awareness to support corrective action.
Near the height of the storm, the cyber team sent up a flare: there’d been a breach of the business system. I imagined crowd of hoody-wearing hackers in a monitor-lit bunker, arranged around a cable spool that served as a conference table, watching storm radar on the Weather Channel, fingers hovering over the “execute exploit” button as the orange intensity blob engulfed our service territory—“Now?” “Wait for it.” “How about now?” With the Internet, the bad guys could challenge our defenses from anywhere on the globe, and this time apparently they’d broken through, at least into our web-connected business management system.
We’d air-gapped our grid-control networks, isolating them from the outside world, but our cyber team got to work anyway to confirm that our critical system hadn’t somehow been compromised, too. It was our own private network, so we could run diagnostics and delve as deep as we liked, accessing everything, leaving no stone unturned. The cellular carrier I’d worked for would never have given a customer that level of access, even a critical infrastructure customer like an electric utility. Plus, commercial networks were designed to make connecting easy; our utility network was the exact opposite. We intentionally made it hard to add new devices, implementing measures that amped up cyber protection, even at the expense of convenience. When it comes to security, we in the utility world serve a different mission, so we apply a different calculus.
“Well, that didn’t take long,” said Ed. “Just lost Rolston Creek.” He swallowed the dregs of his coffee and pushed back his chair. “Wish I could say I’m surprised.” He reached for his slicker and the Magic Bag, a road kit containing all manner of bizarre tools and doodads he’d created over the decades to facilitate his troubleshooting and repairs. Ed grabbed a radio off a charging cradle, clipped it to his belt, and jangled out the door.
I checked the indicators. We’d taken some damage, but redundant backup batteries and generators ensured that even in a power outage, we had juice for communications to help speed restoration of electricity service. Even if we’d lost an LTE site—which was pretty rare, given that we’d hardened the infrastructure to withstand even brutal storms—we’d designed the network with overlapping sites to provide coverage. And if for some reason one of our LTE devices couldn’t connect to the private network, we’d implemented a service that enabled all of them to connect to the commercial carrier as a fallback, if the public network was available.
“Comms NOC, Edison here. You copy?”
I picked up my phone and opened the mission critical Push-To-Talk app. “Hey, Ed, I got you.”
“Damn radio didn’t charge, crapped out on me halfway out here.” His irritation came through loud and clear. “Haven’t used the LTE PTT since training, but it’s pretty sharp. Dispatch had no clue, thought I was coming in over legacy radio.” He laughed, both impressed and a little grudging.
“Great to hear it, Ed. Wouldn’t want anybody to think LTE and legacy don’t play together. We’re downright inter-generational around here.”
***
There was really only one place that made sense for Ol’ Ed’s retirement party. Daisy’s had been his go-to diner for thirty-seven years, the scene of umpteen coffee talks, geek sessions, planning meetings, after-actions and hot-washes, all caffeinated and sugar-fueled by Daisy’s attitude-packing but well-meaning wait staff.
In honor of the event, the place was full of linemen and linewomen, network engineers, admins, even some suits. Ed stood next to me, his back against the counter, uncomfortable with all the attention but lapping it up anyway. He couldn’t stop grinning.
“Is it really happening?” he wondered aloud, elbowing me in the ribs. “Sure you don’t need me another couple of months to make sure your fancy new LTE thing is up to the job?”
“Nope, I’m good. And it’s about time you got to do a whole day’s fishing in peace. Maybe you’ll finally catch something.” I elbowed him back.
The kitchen door swung open and Daisy emerged carrying an enormous sheet cake, elaborately decorated in unnatural colors. Straining to fill such a vast canvas, the baker had gone overboard on the inscriptions. Happy Retirement! Got It Done! Gone Fishin! There was a fishing rod, a hooked steelhead, a passable representation of Ed’s battered skiff. Also a nerdy partial network diagram in purple icing readily recognizable to the true geeks among us as the now decommissioned WiMax implementation at Rolston Creek. And, occupying the place of honor at the center of the cake, a mostly spent roll of duct tape, probably taken from the Magic Bag itself.
The raucous rendition of “Happy Retirement to You” drowned out my phone’s ringtone, but I felt the buzz in my pocket. Severe weather expected over the next few days. I put the phone away and reached for a piece of cake. The network would handle it.