PowerOps in the 5G-PPP NRG-5 project

Despite a number of software frameworks and reference architectures have made available for 5G enabling technologies, there is a clear gap to bridge towards 5G seamless application with a number of “vertical” sectors. Energy vertical represents undoubtedly one of the most significant “test cases” for 5G enabling technologies, due to the need of addressing a huge range of very diverse requirements to deal with across a variety of applications (stringent capacity for smart metering/AMI versus latency for supervisory control and fault localization). However, to effectively support energy utilities along their transition towards more decentralized renewable-oriented systems, several open issues still remain as to 5G networks management automation, security, resilience, scalability and portability. To face these issues, NRG-5 will research and develop a novel 5G PPP-compliant software framework specifically tailored to the energy domain, which combines:

1. trusted, scalable and lock-in free plug ‘n’ play support for a variety of constrained devices;
2. 5G devices’ abstractions to demonstrate mMTC, uMTC and xMBB communications coupled with partially distributed, trusted, end-to-end security and MCM to enable secure, scalable and energy efficient communications;
3. extended Mobile Edge Computing (xMEC) micro-clouds to reduce backhaul load, increase the overall network capacity and reduce delays, while facilitating the deployment of generic MTC- related NFVs and utility-centric VNFs;
4. an extended 5G ETSI-MANO predictive analytics framework to support automated, dynamic, elastic VNF reconfiguration.

Extensive lab based validation will be complemented with real life demonstrations in two pilot sites (Italy, France) where proof-of-concept implementations for 5G-enabled electricity and gas distribution network optimized management will be offered, while offering support to 5G PPP phase III projects via demonstrating high replication potential towards other verticals.