Nokia selected by Kansas City Power & Light to supply a mission-critical communications network to enhance its power grid

• Project will enable KCP&L to bolster power delivery to its 800,000-plus customers in northeast Missouri and eastern Kansas
• Nokia Wavence(TM) microwave packet radio portfolio to support high-bandwidth services such as video and emerging grid applications as well as existing data traffic on a single network

Espoo, Finland - Nokia has been selected by Kansas City Power & Light (KCP&L) to enhance the microwave communications network that supports a range of mission-critical services for the utility's power transmission and distribution grid. The new network, based on packet microwave technology, is intended to support power delivery and reliability for KCP&L's more than 800,000 customers in and around Kansas City, Missouri as well as parts of neighboring state of Kansas.

KCP&L is reinforcing its network using Nokia's Wavence microwave packet radio family of technologies (formerly known as the 9500 Microwave Packet Radio), which will enable the utility to support all of its grid control applications alongside its legacy data services using a single, converged network. This will simplify the management and operation of KCP&L's network today, while laying the groundwork for the introduction of emerging grid applications in the future. This is covered by a 10-year agreement to enable network expansions and upgrades.

The current deployment, covering 40 sites, is already underway and is to be completed before the end of 2017. A second phase consisting of 29 additional sites will follow shortly after.

Nokia's Wavence portfolio incorporates features specifically designed to address the unique needs of utilities, smoothing their transition from time division multiplexing (TDM) technology to Internet Protocol (IP)-based networks. For the project, Nokia is introducing the latest microwave packet radio technology as an overlay to existing equipment. This approach will enable KCP&L to expand their bandwidth to support new IP-based applications without the need for new antenna infrastructure and without forcing a disruption of existing communications, reducing costs and facilitating a seamless, incremental migration from TDM to IP.

The Nokia Wavence microwave portfolio is the leading 'pure packet' product portfolio on the market, and was developed with utilities' stringent requirements for security, reliability, latency and resiliency in mind. The network is managed by Nokia's Network Services Platform.

This agreement builds on Nokia's strong track-record providing mission-critical networks to utilities, having served more than 200 power utilities worldwide. It also highlights the progress of Nokia's strategy of expanding its customer base outside of the traditional telecommunications sphere, a key focus of the company's diversification efforts.

Melvin Sam Charuvilayil, Supervisor Network Planning & Engineering, KCP&L said : "Nokia's microwave packet radio technology delivers the reliability and performance needed to support our current operations, while providing the scalability and flexibility to introduce new services in the future. 'Future Proof' can be an overused term, but the fact that we can easily transition all our TDM applications into the packet realm seamlessly, while supporting our latency-sensitive teleprotection traffic, is particularly appealing. We chose Nokia because of their commitment to the utility industry and because its solution portfolio incorporates microwave radio as a part of its end-to-end communications architecture for utilities. Nokia's Network Service Platform brings network management under one umbrella, simplifying our provisioning and troubleshooting processes across our IP/MPLS and microwave networks and helping us ensure reliable communications to support grid operations."

Kamal Ballout, head of the Global Energy Segment at Nokia, said: "Nokia understands the needs of power utilities like KCP&L, and has dedicated a great deal of effort to ensuring that our packet microwave technology can meet the requirements today, while preparing networks for the introduction of even more advanced technologies in the future."

Resources:

• Nokia Wavence Microwave Packet Radio
• Nokia Solutions for Power Utilities