Operation & Maintenance of Telecom Networks and Associated Information Systems in the Electrical

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WGD2.33 – Survey

Operation & Maintenance of Telecom Networks and associated Information Systems in the Electrical Power Utility

Survey Objective:

This survey, conducted by Cigre Working Group D2.33, aims to obtain an overview of the present status of the Operation & Maintenance (O&M) of Telecom Networks and associated Information Systems (IS) in Electrical Power Utilities (EPU).

It is mainly distributed among Power Utilities participating to Cigre Study Committee D2 (Telecom and Information Systems) and the responses shall be exclusively used for the preparation of a Cigre Technical Report providing guidelines to power utilities, for adapting their O&M processes, tools and organizations to the future evolutions of telecommunication services and underlying infrastructures. Company-specific information shall not be disclosed to any other party or used in any other publication or presentation without prior permission of your company,

Your response is particularly valuable and we highly appreciate your participation. All participants will of course receive in return the overall statistics extracted from your responses.

Company Scope, Network Size and Perimeter of Activity

1.  Your organization is a:

·  Transmission System Operator (TSO)

·  Distribution System Operator (DSO) X

·  Vendor

·  Other (please detail)

2.  Respondant’s role in the O&M process? Planning, Asset Mgt, Supervision, field intervention, etc. Field Intervention

3.  Telecoms that you operate and maintain is used for

·  Operational usage only (Scada, Protection, Substation, …)

·  Used for internal Operational and Admin. Usage X

·  Used for internal and external customers X

4.  Which of the following schemes best describes your telecom organization inside the Electrical Power Utility (EPU)? A

5.  How many network sites are covered by your O&M organization? How large is the geographical area to be covered? 550 sites / 92000km2

6.  Who performs the operation and maintenance of wide area cables? (Fiber, Copper, etc.) Please explain. Electrical Network Maintenance Department (external to Telecommunications Department but internal to the EPU)

7.  Which technologies are employed in your network?

Technology / Approx. Number of Nodes / Technology / Approx. Number of Nodes
Optical transmission infrastructure & WDM / 500 / Core Data Net / MPLS / 20
SDH / Sonet / 80 / Substation LAN / 340
Microwave & Broadband Wireless / 160 / Control Centre LAN / 3
Private Mobile Radio & Ind UHF / 50 / Utility Office/Data Center LAN / 170
Power Line Carriers / 10 / Voice Networking / 95
Primary Multiplexer & PDH / 500 / Field worker Mobile Terminals / 400
Ethernet Transport / 40 / Others / na

8.  Which elements are covered by your O&M organization and in which proportions?

Technology / Approx. Number of Nodes / Technology / Approx. Number of Nodes
Optical transmission infrastructure & WDM / 500/500 / Core Data Net / MPLS / 20/20
SDH / Sonet / 80/80 / Substation LAN / 300/340
Microwave & Broadband Wireless / 160/160 / Control Centre LAN / 0/3
Private Mobile Radio & Ind UHF / 50/50 / Utility Office/Data Center LAN / 0/170
Power Line Carriers / 10/10 / Voice Networking / 0/95
Primary Multiplexer & PDH / 500/500 / Field worker Mobile Terminals / 400/400
Ethernet Transport / 10/40 / Others / na

O&M Organization & Process

9.  How many internal and/or external people are involved in your telecom O&M process for :

·  Upstream Planning & Management ? 2/0

·  Network Supervision & Monitoring ? 4/0

·  Field Works ? 50/0

·  Technical Support ? 6/0

·  Other tasks ?

·  Total ?

10. Is this number planned to increase/decrease significantly in the next 2-5 years? If yes, why? No.

11. What is the functional complexity of your telecom O&M organization and process?

·  Number of O&M Regions 2

·  Levels of O&M Hierarchy – National, Regional, etc. 1 National, 2 Regional, 2 sub-regional

·  No of subcontractors and partners 1 permanent partner, 8 sporadic subcontractors for fiber optics ODFs O&M;

12. What is the scope and organizational structure of your O&M unit? O&M of the described types of equipments in the North and Centre Regions of Portugal (about 48000km2) with 1 hierarchic level.

13. Does your process constrain the choice of technologies and vendors? (mulitple/single vendors for each technology, etc.) If so, please explain the process constraints and drivers. Due to the limitation on the number of human resources affected to the O&M process, as well as spare parts management constraints, it is commonly desirable to restrict the diversity of vendors and technologies in operation.

14. To what extent do you make usage of external work force? (percentage)

·  Fully in-house 95%

·  Outsourced workers integrated in your in-house organization

·  O&M partially contracted to external party with its own process

·  O&M fully contracted to external party 5%

·  Other (please describe)

15. Do you share operational network’s O&M process, staff and tools with

·  Operational IT Department No

·  Corporate Communications & IT Dept. No

·  Substation asset management & maintenance No

·  Others No

·  Please explain the extent of resource sharing

16. How formal is your O&M process? Please choose among examples given or otherwise explain.

·  O&M team share roles and responsibilities according to day-to-day requirements X

·  Roles and responsibilities inside the telecom O&M team are precisely defined and distinguished

·  Incident management follows a formal process, incident resolution is documented, statistics on resolution time and backlog is produced and audited for continuous improivement

·  Quality of Service is determined for internal purpose according to pre-established metrics.

·  Quality of Service is part of your contractual obligations to Users (SLAs). It is monitored and transmitted periodically or continuously to service users and employed on a contractual basis.

17. How do incidents in your network in general get detected? (give estimate proportions)

·  By impacted user (e.g. Power System Control Centre), 80%

·  By the telecom supervision centre fault monitoring systems 20%

18. Do you have a centralized service desk for telecom anomalies? Does this operate 24/7 or only business hours? Does this cover both operational and corporate. Please describe briefly the process. Our company owns a Telecommunications Centralized Service Desk which operates just on business hours and covers operational telecommunications services.

19. Which proportion of anomalies do you think is transmitted informally as opposed to formal service desk? 40% Through which means is this information circulated? (Phone/SMS, green numbers, mail, specific enterprise system, etc.) Phone

20. Do you use a trouble ticketing system to initiate and follow the incident management process? Is this manual or automated? No.

21. Does your process include Root Cause Analysis for anomalies? Which tools do you use? No.

22. Do you perform in a continuous manner or on a periodic basis. Monthly Which tools do you use?

·  Monitoring of QoS for different network users, extrapolated from a corporative SCADA performance tool

·  Monitoring of network performance extrapolated from a corporative corporative SCADA performance tool

23. Do you use measured data for elaborating statistics and trends for internal purpose or for proving that contractual obligations are met? (Yes/No) How explicit are your service contracts towards operational/non-operational users?

·  Best Effort

·  Defined quality but not measured

·  Specified quality (metrics) and measured X

·  Measurements not meeting specified quality is sanctioned

24. What are typical time constraints for solving telecom problems in your organization?

·  Detection,

·  Localization,

·  Site access and intervention, X

·  Spare parts access,

·  Reporting,

·  User Notification, X

·  dead time due to responsibility borders) X

25. What are the 3 main challenges in your company for the operation and maintenance of the telecom network”? Please number them from 1 to 3.

·  Budget

·  Integration into legacy network and migration issues

·  Security (physical and cyber security)

·  Human Resource issues 1

·  Knowledge and Training

·  Internal vs external support

·  Quality of Service

·  Scope of Responsibility 3

·  Priority issues and unplanned actions

·  Other (please detail) shared and wrongly assumed responsabilities - 2

·  Additional comment and feedback

26. How often do you perform each of the following O&M tasks? Insert x in appropriate boxes:

1 per min / 1 per hour / 1 per day / 1 per week / <1 per month
Create new circuit / X
Acknowledge alarm / X
Open incident
Check performance / X
Assign intervention / X
Remote configuration / X

27. Do you perform preventive maintenance of assets? Which assets and how often? No, despite it is already planned, with a typical periodicity of one year for SDH and 2 years for PDH equipment.

28. Where is your Network Operation Support located?

·  Under the Power System Control Centre

·  Independent dedicated Network Operation Centre X

·  Third party NOC

29. Which tools do you use in your 0&M process for each of these tasks (or manual processes)? Open standard tools or proprietary?

·  Fault & Alarm Management Mostly Telecom Equipments Providers Proprietary tools and HP Openview

·  Incident Management & Trouble Ticketing None

·  Configuration Change & channel provisioning Telecom Equipments Providers Proprietary tools

·  Detailed Diagnostics Telecom Equipments Providers Proprietary tools

·  Network Performance Monitoring Proprietary Tool connected to the SCADA system

·  Problem Management & Incident Root Cause Analysis Telecom Equipments Providers Proprietary tools

·  Network & Service Documentation Folders Organization on Windows Explorer

·  User Service Monitoring / User Notification SCADA

·  Availability and User SLA Monitoring Proprietary Tool connected to the SCADA system

· 

·  Statistics production, Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and Trend Analysis MS Excel

·  Information exchange between O&M actors (field, support, and supervision staff) SAP

·  Contingency Analysis & Anomaly Simulation None

30. Which Security measures do you undertake in your O&M process and tools?

·  No connections to public networks X

·  No remote operations on systems at field sites

·  Dedicated terminals and tools resident in field sites and operational centres

·  Password protections on management tools

·  User authentication (e.g. through central authentication server)

·  Centralized access to all individual configuration/craft tools

·  Log Management

·  Encypted access from field device to management platform X

·  Encrypted access from management platform to manager workstations

31. Which communication support and services does your company provide for power system maintenance and asset management teams?

·  Maintenance telephony X

·  Dedicated channels for Scada RTU and asset condition monitoring X

·  Secure remote access connections to substation device HMI X

·  Private Mobile Radio for Field Workers X

·  Secure IP access in the substation for O&M staff

32. How do you maintain the telecom network’s configuration data (network maps, equipment configurations, channel assignments, slot allocations, VLANs, etc.)?

·  Multiple and disjoint media (e.g. CAD files and excel sheets) X

·  Linked data structures

·  Unified Network and Equipment Configuration Data Base

33. Do you expect any major increase in scope and scale of telecom O&M resulting from Smart grid applications, other enhanced communication services, or change in user/provider relationship (e.g. separation of the telecom entity) in near future? Due to the constantly rising weight of telecommunications on power automation support and the particularities of those networks we might expect a creation of an independent telecommunications department (investment, management and O&M).

34. Have you undertaken any process change, staff increase or the deployment of enhanced tools to adapt to this new requirements? Please explain your response. It would be desirable to improve telecommunications assets management, incident management and diagnosis tools and processes. It would also be necessary to increase staff dedicated to telecom management and O&M.

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