PowerOps in the 5G-PPP NRG-5 project

Project full name: Enabling Smart Energy as a Service via 5G Mobile Network advances
Project ID: 762013
Project URL: http://www.nrg5.eu/

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.

In the context of NRG-5, PowerOps will test and enrich our portfolio of secure, contracts-based, transactive services, enabling lock-in free strategies for all end-users, allowing the latter to switch to the Utility of their preference be it Electricity, Gas, Water, etc. Our blockchain services will handle the rest!