Electricity company EDF has accelerated its private LTE rollout at nuclear power plants in France with Ericsson and Thales. The firm, which originally scheduled two-to-four networks per year when the project was announced in 2021, told Private Networks Global Forum this week that it has so far deployed nine private LTE networks, and has a new target of six per year. It wants 21 private LTE networks at 21 nuclear sites, to connect workers and machines at 57 power stations.
The company has been impressed by its work with Ericsson and Thales, and the coverage and performance achieved by its new private LTE setups, and has resolved to go faster with the project in France, it told the event on Tuesday (May 28). EDF (Électricité de France) said it had another private LTE deployment at an offshore wind farm, and a brand new private LTE pilot, with scope for a private 5G upgrade, at a thermal / gas power generation plant, as well.
Vincent Audebert, handling 5G and IoT in EDF Lab, the firm’s R&D department, said: “It is the first time in my 30-years at EDF that a telecoms project has finished ahead of deadline. Because there is such interest in this project, [and] EDF has decided to accelerate the deployment. So we are going to gain two years on our schedule – [and move to a schedule of] six networks… per year. We already have nine networks – out of 21 sites with 57 reactors. [The plan is] we will have 21 [private] networks.”
EDF’s LTE rollout, which started in 2021 at the Blayais power plant in southwest France, goes under the name CONNECT, and is considered the biggest deployment of its kind in the nuclear power sector. At Private Networks Global Forum, hosted by RCR Wireless, Audebert said EDF will install private LTE at other wind farms and thermal power plants in France, as well. “We plan to extend it to other… plants,” he said. EDF has eight power plants in the UK, also.
The company has a 10-year licence for 20 MHz of spectrum in the 2.6 GHz TDD band (band #38, 2570-2620 MHz) at its sites in France, as offered to metropolitan businesses by regulator ARCEP; it also has a deal with the French Ministry of Interior for two three-megahertz tranches of 700 MHz spectrum, officially prescribed for public protection and disaster relief (PPDR). “With that we’re able to cope with our jobs that we need to do on a day-to-day basis in the nuclear power plant,” said Audebert.
To an extent, upgrade-rollout of private 5G hinges on ARCEP making available spectrum at 3.9-4.0 GHz to enterprises in France. The R&D team at EDF Lab holds an experimental licence to develop 5G use cases in the 3.9-4.0 GHz band; Audebert said the R&D team is working with Ericsson, Thales, and France-based IoT chipmaker Sequans to develop new LTE and 5G applications (“drones, video, AR; anything like this”). “The output of the project will be delivered within two years,” he said.
He noted EDF’s interest in the 450 MHz band as well, which is subject to a parallel work stream within ARCEP.
Specifically, Audebert said EDF’s private LTE networks are being managed and maintained by the company itself. He commented: “[Ericsson and Thales] provide us with a solution that is able to be provisioned, and then it’s built by EDF. Even if the integration is done by our partners, it is very important for us to… manage what’s on our site.” He noted the challenge to find skilled staff, however.
“What I would say is [most] complex is to find skilled people. Because [for a nuclear plant] it’s not your usual domain of expertise. But we have [found] people… to be sure that we are able to work with [cellular[ by ourselves. So EDF is doing the day-to-day work [so] everything runs smoothly – for… functions, security. We count on Ericsson and Thales for support… but we are really driving the system.”
The other takeaway from the discussion at Private Networks Global Forum is that EDF is focused primarily on LTE because of spectrum availability, but also because it delivers for its purposes, currently, which are generally focused on reliable and extensive coverage for straight worker connectivity. “The first thing, and it may be basic, is we need voice communication,” said Audebert.
He went on: “You can add [mission-critical and video] on PTT… [and also] share pictures… which is important [for remote access to] expertise… [The success of these applications] is why the project has been sped up. There is such interest to… digitalize [worker processes] with applications on smartphones… In a nuclear power plant, you don’t have a public network so it is very important to have… very, very reliable [connectivity] that can reach all parts of the power plant.”
Current R&D work at EDF is focused on “more applications on 4G”, he explained – as per the collaboration with Ericsson, Thales, and Sequans. There was less said about network performance, except to note that EDF has its own private on-site and local edge data centres, which dictate latency of applications, and even less on service level agreements (“confidential”). But Audebert opened proceedings with a note about EDF’s need for closer collaboration with public network operators as well.
He said: “I know we are in a private networks event, but as a big utility it is important for us to be able to work with operator networks as well… Which is why we’re pushing a lot working with 3GPP to have better coordination between the distribution system operators for the grid and mobile network operators for the telecoms.”
He summed up: “It was difficult to [make] this choice… – to say, okay, we’re going to move to this new [critical communications] technology. It was a very innovative move by EDF… [and] it changed the way the processes are done in nuclear power plants. So it was very important… And it showed [how it was possible for] an industrial company to build a private network. Nobody else was building private networks; now you have multiple offers, a lot of companies… It is nice to see that we were at the forefront.”
