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How important is private LTE to modernizing the rural grid?

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Private LTE networks are shaping the future of rural grid modernization. But how can small utilities harness this technology to overcome their unique challenges?

In this episode of Power Perspectives, that challenge is addressed head on by Joe Walsh, Vice President of Smart Grid Communications Networks at NRTC. Joe sits down for this conversation to help us explore how a groundbreaking collaboration between NRTC, Anterix, Ericsson, and Southern Linc is helping rural utilities build secure, scalable, and cost-effective communication networks.

Tune in and learn from Joe as he shares insights on:

  • The challenges rural utilities face in modernizing their grids
  • How private LTE networks improve resilience, security, and scalability
  • The benefits of vendor diversity and shared cooperative resources
  • Real-world examples of co-ops implementing private LTE

Whether you're in the utility sector or just interested in the evolving energy landscape, strap in and join podcast host Jason Price and producer Matt Chester as they welcome Joe's valuable insights at the role of advanced communications in building the grid of the future.

 

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Thanks to the sponsor of this episode of the Power Perspectives: Anterix

 

Key Links:

Anterix on Energy Central: energycentral.com/o/anterix

Joe Walsh's profile on Energy Central: https://energycentral.com/member/profile/joe-walsh-0

Ask a Question to Our Future Guests: Do you have a burning question for the utility executives and energy industry thought leaders that we feature each week on Power Perspectives? Leave us a message here for your chance to be featured in an upcoming episode: www.speakpipe.com/EnergyCentralPodcast

 

TRANSCRIPT

Jason Price:

Modernizing the grid is a critical step for rural utilities to meet demands of today's energy landscape. But implementing the right solutions often requires collaboration, innovation, cutting edge technology. This past summer, NRTC partnered with Anterix, Ericsson and Southern Linc to announce a groundbreaking initiative to help rural utilities harness private LTE networks to overcome their unique challenges and prepare for the grid of the future.

Today we're joined by Joe Walsh, vice president of Smart Grid Communications Networks at NRTC. With nearly three decades of experience in communications and technology, Joe has been at the forefront of helping utilities adopt transformative solutions from private networks and IoT to advanced 5G communications. And he's going to walk us through why this represented such a significant and important move.

I'm Jason Price, coming to you from New York City, and with me as always is Matt Chester, Energy Central producer and community manager from Orlando, Florida. Matt, this private LTE collaboration touches on innovation, rural access and grid modernization, key themes we see in conversations across the Energy Central community. So what's the buzz been like on these topics?

 

Matt Chester:

Hey, thanks Jason. And yeah, across the Energy Central community, we've observed a noticeably growing focus on broader grid modernization, but of course a subset of that on how rural utilities can bridge the gap between their unique challenges and that end goal. So innovations like private LTE networks, they've sparked excitement among our members because they do enable secure, reliable communication infrastructure. And all of that is critical for integrating DERs, improving resilience, ensuring equitable access to this technology, all goals that we're all pursuing. So this collaboration, it's definitely struck a chord as a model for tackling these pressing issues, and I know I, and hopefully our listeners, are hoping to learn more from the firsthand experience shared by our guest today.

 

Jason Price:

Thanks, Matt. Before we dive in today's episode however, I want to thank Anterix, our sponsor of today's show. Now, let's get started. Joe Walsh, welcome to the Energy Central Power Perspectives podcast.

 

Joe Walsh:

Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

 

Jason Price:

As are we. Joe, let's dive into the topic. First off, give our listeners a bit more of a background about your role in mission of NRTC.

 

Joe Walsh:

NRTC is a cooperative, and if you're not familiar with a cooperative model, it essentially means we are owned by our customers, or as we call them, our members. And we're essentially a technology extension for about 850 rural electric members and about 600 rural telecom providers. And as that extension, we help our members in all phases of technology adoption, starting with thinking through the use or business cases, vendor selection, design, procurement, installation, and in some cases we even help out with operations. And to give you a concept of size of our 850 electric members, that represents about 20 million meters. And if you want to think about that from a size standpoint, we cover approximately 70% of the landmass of the continental United States. So lots of territory, relatively small numbers of meters individually, but a lot collectively together.

 

Jason Price:

That's great. So we talked about at the intro about the announcement this past summer with NRTC in collaboration with Anterix, Ericsson and Souther Linc to help rural utilities modernize the grid with private LTE. So let's dive into that. Share details about how this collaboration came about and what are its goals.

 

Joe Walsh:

And I think it's really important to really recognize the history that NRTC and the role we've played in the communications realm. We started a number of years ago. Actually, NRTC was started around and supporting a lot of the early satellite TV initiatives, including things like DirecTV. From the smart grid side, a number of years ago we started aggregating and licensing out the 220 megahertz spectrum licenses on behalf of our members. And these networks provided, and actually in some cases still provide, some mission-critical communications in what I call connectivity deserts. Areas where you just have no other options. And if you fast-forward to today in the utility space, and really across all industries, there's a move away from those proprietary networks, what I call unit tasker networks. They're really great at doing one or two things, but they're proprietary, so it limits your ecosystem.

And we're moving towards more standards-based networks. And from the electric industry around the world where we're seeing the big three being fiber, microwave and LTE. And because it's open standards, we get more vendors making devices that interoperate with each other. This creates a huge ecosystem which brings down costs for us, as well as helps us out with vendor diversity. Meaning, if I lose one vendor for any particular reason, I've got a backup that will interoperate seamlessly.

Now, most of our members will use and will continue to use public LTE networks, but as we get more devices and security and reliability rise in importance, one of the things we recognized was the need to support our members with private LTE adoption. And we launched a program about four years ago to really start evaluating vendors, issuing RPs, developing contracts to simplify the implementing and implementation and installing of the LTE networks. Essentially what we've done, and I'll have to call out, I was watching a presentation of somebody who was describing the partnership that we put together, and really going through all of the things that we've done on behalf of the co-ops that a lot of larger utilities have to go through and do one by one. And he basically said, "What NRTC has done is they've created an easy button for small utilities to adopt private LTE."

 

Jason Price:

That's really helpful, Joe. So let's talk about these rural utilities. What are some of the unique challenges faced by your members? And then let's dig into a bit more about how this collaboration came about in terms of what you're doing to tackle some of those challenges.

 

Joe Walsh:

Yeah. So a couple of things. Number one is size. On average, our member is likely around 35,000 to 40,000 meters, but there's a significant tail on the smaller side with members under 7,000 meters, even some under 4,000 meters. And we have a very long small tail with a handful of members that have several hundred thousand meters. So we're really battling the economies of scale when we start thinking about private LTE. That will impact us not only in terms of cost of the equipment, cost of the services, but also really the expertise to be able to design and run the networks.

And the other part is that we're very rural communities and we are all over the place. So we do have some members that abut up into large suburban areas, but we also have members that have just a couple of meters per mile and that are very spread out. Meaning it can take several hours to drive from one side of the territory to the other. And so these two things really make it challenging for us. And through the collaboration, we're solving some of the expertise scale by bringing that in, helping folks design it. Through Southern Linc, we are bringing in the capability to run the core and have a shared cooperative core that will work across the country. That also helps us out with having the NOC services and to be able to remotely manage and maintain the network.

Ericsson actually is one of the reasons why we ended up selecting them is that so much of the infrastructure can be remotely upgraded, remotely managed without truck rolls. That was really important for us to minimize those. And then with Anterix, we were really helping out on a couple of fronts. One, through the design process, we're helping our members understand what spectrum they need and where. And then we're also working with Anterix where we are overlapping with investor-owned utilities that own spectrum, and already licensed the Anterix spectrum. We're setting up collaboration so that we are sharing the network resources. The investor-owneds will start deploying and they're already deploying in urban and suburban areas and working their way out. But we'll be able to start bringing in from the rural territory. That helps reduce our cost and actually reduces the cost on both our side as well as the investor-owned utility side, as well as increases the capabilities of what we might have had otherwise.

 

Jason Price:

That's great. Our audience is pretty familiar with Anterix. We had them on as a guest, I would say about a couple years ago, was running some pilots up in upstate New York with NYPA. But the LTE technology is really fascinating. It's come a long way. Let's talk a little bit more about the uniqueness of your members. It's the electric co-ops. How does private LTE solve some of these solutions that they're looking to basically solve?

 

Joe Walsh:

Yeah, and there's an expression in the co-op world, "If you've met a co-op, you've met a co-op." And it really drives home that there are a lot of uniquenesses across the board. But I'll give you a couple of examples of some of the members that we're working on for LTE deployments. One of the cooperatives that I'm working with is facing a several million dollar upgrade to an old LMR radio for their push to talk. And that upgrade is really only going to give them push to talk. It doesn't give them data. They're in an area of the country where about 40% of their territory is one of those connectivity deserts that there is just nothing else there. From a safety and efficiency standpoint, we really need to not only communicate out with the line crews, we need to get them that field force mobile broadband, but we also have to communicate out to the devices, the substations. And right now where they do have connectivity, so in the other 60% they're working with several dozen different contracts for the connections.

And as we started talking to them about leveraging private LTE, we started out with, "Okay, well your first thing is let's get good reliable push to talk and field force mobile broadband out to your crews." But then as we started talking about all of the other advantages that they get with that, so that you have one network to manage for reaching out to all of those devices, they quickly realized that, okay, not only is this my push to talk, but it's substations, down-line devices, AMI takeout points, sensors, all of these things that we've been talking about. So it drives the safety and efficiency, but it also enables them to realize the reliability improvements, reduction in wildfire risk, and it saves them the operational headache of having one more network to run as they rationalize the number of those unit-tester networks they have.

 

Jason Price:

That's great. So let me understand, so it's fully deployed, is that correct?

 

Joe Walsh:

It is not. So we are in the early stages with the co-ops adopting it. Everybody has been really leveraging LTE to some point. But what we're doing now is we're working through the early stages of our first deployments. And it will be slow over the next several years, but I do expect it to pick up. One, as we start getting more and more comfort with the technology and we're seeing the benefits that are being driven from those co-ops that are adopting it. And then two, quite honestly over time we really look at the cost curves coming down. Not only cost curves coming down from the network side, but also from all the devices that we need to have connectivity to, which increases the value of having a good reliable communications network.

 

Jason Price:

Okay. Do you have any use cases, any early adoption use cases that you could share to illustrate some of the value from the existing pilots you've done?

 

Joe Walsh:

Yeah. And I'll expand it out to LTE, because at the end of the day, we're really talking about LTE. It's the implementation of how we see it happening. For many of our members, I see a partnership either with investor-owned utilities or with the public carriers. So we may only deploy, in our first iterations, LTE towers in the areas where the public carriers are not covering now. And through our roaming relationships that we have set up, we'll still have one SIM that we'll be able to leverage to manage all of our devices. So from our perspective, it looks like they're all in our network, but it minimizes the number of towers I have to put up and manage. I've been calling this hybrid LTE, so a mashup between private LTE to close the coverage gaps in the national carriers.

And when you think about what we're using LTE for, it is a lot of what the larger utilities are. Think about distribution automation. One of the co-ops that I work with, they have specialized trip curves for lightning storms, and that helps them reduce some of their operational expenses because they can do all of that remotely, helps them improve their reliability. And I expect this to really translate out as we get things like red flag days where we need to change our protection schemes in wildfire-prone areas.

We are starting to see, and we have a number of co-ops that are moving beyond just the monitoring and remote administration into some of the automatic switching schemes like FLISR. So that helps us really turn a large outage into a small outage by minimizing the area that's de-energized. And then load management is also a big area that is increasing in capabilities or increasing in the need for it and controlling those DIRs that we talked about or implementing DVR schemes. Not only do they help us reduce our wholesale cost in portions of the country that may have high peak rates, but it also gives us flexibility for how to deal with a curtailment that may come down the line that helps us improve the reliability for our members.

 

Jason Price:

That's really interesting. So I also understand that ... and there's the Anterix Active Ecosystem, which is basically an opportunity that brings in hundreds of technology innovators to give them an environment to build and innovate. That sounds really interesting and something that's also fascinating about Anterix. Can you talk about it? Do you have experience with the ecosystem and how is it contributing value to the NRTC members?

 

Joe Walsh:

I look at it as really it's a double benefit. And if you think on one side we're supporting and we're increasing the ecosystem. And by and large, there are a lot of great manufacturers out there of the grid components, and this is a broad brush, but they're really good at making the parts that interact with the grid, making the control panels, the devices, the sensors. But it is challenging sometimes to incorporate in LTE in the modules.

And one of the things that Anterix has really been doing is working with the module manufacturers and providing advice and guidance to the OEMs on what modules they can implement, particularly as we start thinking about security, ensuring that none of the components that we are looking at either from the hardware or the software has Chinese origins. And then also just the know-how of how to really work well with the LTE networks and it helps us improve the connectivity. So that helps us really expand out the number of devices that we can use and it makes it easier for everybody.

The flip side of that is for our members, it helps us out with a single source of truth for devices that we can search based on specific requirements. And one of the things that I really work with our members on is thinking about environmental factors. Not all devices are created equal. Some will drop all the way down to a -40° temperature range. Some don't go that far. And if you live in a cold area, you need to make sure that all of your components are doing that. Through the Active Ecosystem, because they are kind of aggregating and they're pulling together all of the specifications and the different vendors, it's super easy to say, "Hey, I'm looking for devices that do this, this, and this." And they'll give us a list of devices to be able to explore.

 

Jason Price:

Okay. Joe, where you sit, you're really in the know. So are you able to share any exciting opportunities? What is the development roadmap or the use case roadmap look like in the years ahead to help modernize your members' participation in the grid?

 

Joe Walsh:

Well, I think again, it gets back to the cost and the advancement curves. One of the things that we do for our members is we help them put together a ten-year smart grid technology roadmap. Really thinking about the use in business cases behind different smart grid initiatives and when you should start to think about deploying them over the next 10 years.

And oftentimes people will say, "Well, wait a minute, 10 years from now, how do you know what's going to be out there?" Look, we may not know the vendor and we're probably going to have things that we're going to add onto the roadmap over the course of time. We want to make sure that these are flexible. But when you start taking a look at, and look at something like Moore's Law, the devices we are buying in January of 2035 are going to be 32 times more powerful than the devices we have in January 2025, at the same cost point. And maybe that Moore's Law is slowing down. Everybody says that every two years that Moore's Law is slowing down. It never seems to do. But even if you're only looking at small advances, we're going to have more data, more control, and more capabilities that will really drive through the reliability improvements and really hit the root of what we're doing. Affordable, reliable power for our communities. And that's huge, huge economic benefit for our communities.

 

Jason Price:

That's great. That's great. Clearly, you know a lot about the space, and thank you for sharing that insight. Joe, we are going to give you the final word, but we want to pivot now to what we call the lightning round, which gives us an opportunity to learn a little bit more about you the person, rather than you the professional. So we're going to throw a bunch of questions at you. We ask you to keep your response to one word or phrase or sentence. So Joe, are you ready?

 

Joe Walsh:

You know I can't do that.

 

Jason Price:

All right, well here we go. Let's give it a try. What's your dream vacation spot?

 

Joe Walsh:

I will say it's the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

 

Jason Price:

Best gift you've ever received?

 

Joe Walsh:

Telescope.

 

Jason Price:

What's the most rewarding part of your job?

 

Joe Walsh:

The response from our members. It's really exciting to just get great positive feedback when we help them really overcome some of the technology challenges they have.

 

Jason Price:

Sure. We've been collecting lightning rounds from past guests, so we have one here from one of our guests to ask a future guest. So here we go. Mike Goggin of SSP Innovation left this one for you. What one decision did you make that changed the direction of your career?

 

Joe Walsh:

Early on I joined a technology consulting firm and it was a company called AMS, American Management Systems. And the reason why it was really pivotal is the way they treated their employees. We really had a lot of free rein to grow and expand. And being a year out of college, a year and a half out of college, I was able to have my own clients, my own project teams, and really helped me grow and develop as a leader.

 

Jason Price:

That's a nice, nice story. All right, so now it's your turn. What lightning round question would you want to challenge a future guest? And keep in mind, Joe, it can be topical or it can be something off the wall. It's your call.

 

Joe Walsh:

I'll go through ... and gosh, this is going to be a dirty word for some folks, artificial intelligence. Look, I believe we're on the hype cycle and we're approaching the zone of inflated expectations and we're about to hit the trough of disillusionment, but we're going to come out over the next 10 years into that plateau of productivity. So I guess my question with that background would be, what's the most valuable thing we'll be getting from artificial intelligence in five to 10 years?

 

Jason Price:

That's a great question. Joe, last question for you. What will you consider a sign of success when your career is all said and done?

 

Joe Walsh:

I want somebody to say at my retirement party, "He did good." Leave the world better than we came into it. And that's what I really hope for.

 

Jason Price:

I have a feeling that will be said. All right, Joe, thank you. So you did a great job with the lightning round and I did promise you you'd get the final word. And knowing that we've got utility CEOs, executives, and other key decision makers listening to the podcast, what's the key piece of advice you have for these professionals when it comes to private LTE, and what action do you hope they take after listening in today?

 

Joe Walsh:

Really thinking about it from the smaller utility standpoint, the collaboration across the industry is key. And while I say this from the small utility standpoint, this will have benefits for the investor-owned utilities as well. So really, reach out, engage with folks like me, or with the small utilities that you are encompassing and really look at how you can jointly embark on the private LTE journey together.

 

Jason Price:

That's great, Joe. You're clearly an important and valued voice for the small utilities, so we really appreciate you coming on today and sharing this insight. And I expect our listeners will have a lot of follow-up questions and comments, so please stay engaged.

 

Joe Walsh:

Absolutely.

 

Jason Price:

Absolutely. And we encourage that. We encourage our members to listen in and provide comments and we welcome your questions and comments for Joe to respond to. Joe, thank you again for joining us today.

 

Joe Walsh:

Thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to engaging with folks.

 

Jason Price:

Absolutely. And we also want to give a shout-out of thanks to our podcast sponsors that made today's episode possible. Thanks to Anterix. Anterix is a communications technology company where utility meets connectivity. Its transformative broadband enables the modernization of critical infrastructure for the energy, utility, transportation, logistics, and other sectors of our economy. Visit anterix.com. And once again, I'm your host Jason Price. To plug in and stay fully charged in the discussion by popping into the community at energycentral.com. And we'll see you next time at the Energy Central Power Perspectives podcast.

.

 

About Energy Central Podcasts

Power Perspectives features conversations with thought leaders in the utility sector. At least twice monthly, we connect with an Energy Central Power Industry Network community member to discuss compelling topics that impact professionals who work in the power industry. Some podcasts may be a continuation of thought-provoking posts or discussions started in the community or with an industry leader that is interested in sharing their expertise and doing a deeper dive into hot topics or issues relevant to the industry.

Power Perspectives is the premiere podcast series from Energy Central, a Power Industry Network of Communities built specifically for professionals in the electric power industry and a place where professionals can share, learn, and connect in a collaborative environment. Supported by leading industry organizations, our mission is to help global power industry professionals work better. Since 1995, we’ve been a trusted news and information source for professionals working in the power industry, and today our managed communities are a place for lively discussions, debates, and analysis to take place. If you’re not yet a member, visit www.EnergyCentral.com to register for free and join over 200,000 of your peers working in the power industry.

Power Perspectives is hosted by Jason Price, Community Ambassador of Energy Central. Jason is a Business Development Executive at West Monroe, working in the East Coast Energy and Utilities Group. Jason is joined in the podcast booth by the producer of the podcast, Matt Chester, who is also the Community Manager of Energy Central and energy analyst/independent consultant in energy policy, markets, and technology.  

If you want to be a guest on a future episode of Power Perspectives, let us know! We’ll be pulling guests from our community members who submit engaging content that gets our community talking, and perhaps that next guest will be you! Likewise, if you see an article submitted by a fellow Energy Central community member that you’d like to see broken down in more detail in a conversation, feel free to send us a note to nominate them.  For more information, contact us at [email protected]. Podcast interviews are free for Expert Members and professionals who work for a utility.  We have package offers available for solution providers and vendors. 

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