Connecting the grid: Rugged routers that connect your business anywhere

Co-authored by Marcus Smith

Utilities are facing greater challenges than ever before. Electricity grids need to handle more sustainable, distributed, and variable energy sources. At the same time, they are being battered by fires, extreme weather conditions, and other environmental factors. The business models of utilities are evolving as they serve a greater variety of customers. In developed countries, much of the utility workforce is retiring, creating skill and resource gaps, and utility companies are being asked to expand electrical capacity as the world reduces carbon emissions. These challenges coexist with ever-evolving cyberthreats.

Communications technology underpins the modern smart grid, enabling assets to send data in real-time to control center and business applications. This results in a greater situational awareness of the grid.

Substations are by nature challenging environments and call for a different class of router. Cisco Industrial Routers are built to handle temperature extremes, vibration, humidity, dust, and water. With them, industrial assets can be protected even in the most remote locations as built-in enterprise-grade security helps to protect networks from attacks. Their ruggedized designs are built for tough outdoor conditions and are designed to be scaled easily with management tools that IT and operations teams can deploy and manage remotely. SD-WAN allows for deployment of a common set of policies, automation of security setups, and optimization of traffic from the enterprise to the edge.

The Cisco Catalyst IR8300 Rugged Series Router was named “Industrial IoT Innovation of the Year” in the 2023 IoT Breakthrough Awards. IoT Breakthrough is a leading market intelligence organization that recognizes the top companies, technologies, and products in the global Internet of Things (IoT) market today.

Smartening the grid: the Enedis digitalization journey with Cisco IoT and Orange Business Services

Enedis is the main Distribution Service Operator (DSO) in France; it manages an electricity grid covering the whole country. Historically, the power production was concentrated within large plants (mainly nuclear) attached to a one-way distribution network. The rise of alternative energy sources required the grid to become smarter. The growing number of consumers who are becoming energy producers—such as rooftop solar owners who export power back into the grid—adds complexity and creates challenges for the utility operating the grid. It becomes a necessity to finely monitor the end user demand closest to the consumption point in order to balance and optimize the energy fed into the grid.

To answer this challenge, Enedis digitized its grid with Cisco IoT technology and Orange Business Service as a partner. Watch the below video to learn about the Cisco products utilized and the partnership built with Enedis.

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