China Telecom, Huawei and the State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC) recently completed what they claim as the industry's first electricity network slice test under a real power grid environment in Nanjing.
This is also the world's first electricity slice to comply with the latest 5G SA specifications released by 3GPP, claims Huawei. The success of this test marks a milestone in an in-depth exploration of 5G vertical industry applications.
The SA electricity slice fully utilizes the millisecond-level latency advantage on 5G networks and SLA assurance of network slicing. It enhances bidirectional communication between power grids and end users, and ensures precise management of small power units on power grid terminals of overloaded power grids. These advantages help minimize the economic and social impact caused by power outages.
An approximately 35 ms end-to-end latency, which may fluctuate slightly from time to time, was discovered in the processes of power server processing, network instruction transmission, and load control terminal processing. Slice isolation was also fully verified. The slice was proven to meet mission-critical requirements for millisecond-level precise management of load processing units running on telecom networks.
After the phase-1 test is complete, the companies will continue to deepen collaboration and further promote 5G commercialization tests in the electricity industry. They plan to test more application scenarios and slices, such as smart monitoring, in the second phase under a power usage environment with live network users.
Zhan Mingfei, Deputy GM of the Goverment and Enterprise Customer Department, China Telecom Jiangsu
The painstaking experiment with the 5G electricity slice will also provide China Telecom with extensive experience in providing high standard 5G solutions for diversified vertical industries.
Qiu Xuefeng, President of Huawei's 5G Core Network
The core network is the key to developing 5G network slicing in terms of on-demand network definition, fast deployment, automated operations, end-to-end SLA assurance, and capability exposure.
