ENEL/ENDESA, Spain

Due to the variety of regulatory environments in which Enel operate, the successful solution needed to operate within existing 12.5khz frequency allocations in the VHF and UHF bands, depending on the country of use. Due to the legacy of the deployed Distribution Automation solutions across the various Enel Distribution companies, multiple Data standards including IEC101, 103 and DNP3 were required along with open standards based, over-the-air communications. The solution also needed to be scalable from 1 or 2 sites to over 150 sites due to the varying demands of Distribution companies within the group.

The solution required efficient bandwidth management by optimizing available spectrum, maximum resilience and security assurance through authentication, encryption and message integrity controls. The SCADA systems required support for IEC-101 and IEC-104, protocols to Remote Terminal Units supporting serial RS-232 and Ethernet.

After a robust and extensive evaluation, Enel enabled their Distribution Companies in Spain Peru, Colombia, Brazil and Chile to take advantage of Tait Gridlink. Deployment throughout the Enel Group has been ongoing since 2014. At the time of writing, over 10,000 GridLink terminals have been deployed supported by 300 radio sites in five countries, with an additional 5,000 GridLink terminals to be ordered.

With the implementation of the Tait DMR3 SCADA GridLink solution ENEL has achieved their targeted goal for improved grid reliability and resilience to over 99% and has improved the service quality to their customers whilst reducing operational costs through better visibility of and remote access to endpoints.

Expansion of their current data services is in progress and continues over the next two years with thousands of additional GridLink devices to be added.

The DMR tier 3 network enables the addition of voice services at marginal cost. This is planned for next year, and will further enhance the productivity and safety of field personnel, especially lone workers.