Tonga Power to Use Smart Grid Tech to Manage Energy Supply ^Featured

OpenWay Riva will enable holistic energy management with TPL’s significant renewable integration and optimize network communications with adaptive communications technology. TPL will use Itron services to manage and maintain the network.

As a part of its smart island goals, Tonga will soon generate more than half of its electricity by renewable means such as solar power. Using OpenWay Riva, Tonga can monitor and manage the integration of renewable energy into the electric grid, ensuring grid reliability and energy security. In addition, TPL plans to use the solution to maximize revenue protection and help manage customer disconnects and reconnects remotely.

Combining radio frequency mesh and power line carrier communications on the same chip set, the OpenWay Riva technology enables dynamic selection of the optimal communications path based on network operating conditions, data attributes and application requirements. With adaptive communication capabilities, deployment of network infrastructure is easier, faster and less costly. It also greatly reduces the amount of time and effort needed for upfront network design and propagation studies.

The OpenWay Riva solution being installed at TPL includes OpenWay Riva smart meters, Cisco Connected Grid Routers as well as back-office data collection software, including Itron’s meter data management, collection engine and reporting software and Cisco’s IoT Field Network Director. Installation of the solution will be complete by the end of Q4 2015. After installation, Itron will also provide TPL with managed services for overall system management and maintenance of Itron’s cloud-based services for data collection.

Source: T & D World