Jason Li, Director of Marketing & Solutions Sales, Huawei Electric Power Digitalization Business Unit, gave a speech in which he emphasized that the power communication network is the basis for automatic power grid dispatching, market-oriented network operations, and modernized management. He also noted that such a network is an important means to ensure secure, stable, and economical operations of the power grid as well as the core infrastructure of the power system. The White Paper, released by Huawei, describes how to build an intelligent optical base for power communication networks based on the all-optical architecture. It also aims to help the electric power industry cope with digital challenges, meet technical requirements for digital transformation, and accelerate digital transformation.

The digital transformation of the electric power industry requires the power communication network to inherit the hard pipe technology used on production network services — such as SCADA, security and stability system, and teleprotection — to ensure high reliability and deterministic low latency of the production network. In addition, the power communication network must also be capable of carrying future-oriented services, such as situation awareness and IoT, to improve the scalability of network bandwidth and the flexibility of multi-service bearing. With the development of the fifth-generation fixed network (F5G), the optical service unit (OSU), as the fifth-generation native hard pipe (NHP) technology, takes the best of both SDH and OTN technologies. It supports the ultra-high bandwidth beyond 100G, and provides 2 Mbit/s to 100 Gbit/s service access capabilities, meeting needs of both production network services and future-oriented services. These strengths make OSU the preferred solution for digital power grid network construction and SDH network upgrade.

According to the White Paper, the OSU technology is integrated into the backbone network, power transmission and transformation network, and substation/power distribution network to implement highly secure bearing of network services at each layer. The architecture implements E2E one-hop transmission from the substation/power distribution network to the backbone network, making the NHP all-optical architecture the optimal architecture of the power communication network. Specifically, the NHP all-optical architecture of the power communication network has the following features:

• The NHP all-optical architecture features high network compatibility, service isolation, and wide site coverage. It enables networks at each layer to inherit the original hard pipe technology and ensures smooth evolution of service systems.
• The OSU technology implements one-hop transmission of E2E services, ensuring secure isolation between service systems. In addition, uniform management interfaces and technical standards are provided to simplify management and O&M.
• OSU over Passive Optical Network (OSU over PON for short) implements hard pipe PON, extending NHP to scenarios such as substations. E2E hard pipes and hard isolation not only implement E2E service provisioning, but also ensure service security and quality.
• In terms of security, the NHP all-optical communication network systems are physically isolated from each other. Based on the zero-trust framework, an in-depth defense system is built for the power communication network to meet the availability, reliability, and resilience requirements of electric power services.

Huawei has been working in the optical network field for nearly 30 years and has maintained the largest market share in the global optical network market for 13 consecutive years. Huawei makes full use of its technological prowess to continuously explore the electric power industry. Together with the upstream and downstream of the industry chain, Huawei has provided secure, stable, and reliable all-optical communication network solutions for countries and regions such as China, Thailand, Brazil, the UAE, and Austria, accelerating the digital transformation of the electric power industry and reshaping industry productivity.