UK National Grid Selects EXFO for Innovative Fiber Health Monitoring Pilot Project

EXFO, the communications industry's test, monitoring and analytics experts,  announced that  National Grid one of the world's largest publicly-listed utilities focused on transmission and distribution of electricity and gas, has selected EXFO for an innovation pilot project to provide monitoring for its ongoing fiber network health assessment in the UK, supporting the UK's goal of becoming National Grid has deployed an overhead fiber optic operational telecommunications network across its electricity transmission infrastructure that carries critical information essential for secure and efficient utility operations. EXFO's technology will help assess the operational condition of the fiber network, while predicting its remaining technical lifespan and identifying potential points of weakness or failure.

For the first time in such an application, EXFO will also collect data from   Intellisense Systems micro weather station (MWS) Internet of Things (IoT) devices being deployed to measure the specific environmental impact of wind, humidity and meteorological events. EXFO's Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based analytics solution will amalgamate and correlate data from both the fiber optic network and weather system inputs, and dynamically predict, detect, and prevent outages and impairments in the network that might otherwise go unnoticed.

National Grid anticipates that EXFO's proactive monitoring and fault detection can deliver a net benefit of as much as £2.9m (approx. $3.5 million USD) derived from failure avoidance and extending the lifespan of the existing network.

EXFO will measure, analyze, and report results from an 80 km span of the National Grid network -- in one of the most challenging areas of the UK for weather issues – over a 12-month period. Deployment of test equipment and Intellisense devices got underway in October 2022.

Quick Facts    

In the long term, improved operational communications networks will be critical for control and protection systems in the transition to renewable energy power stations and the UK's path to net zero.