Communications, the backbone of the future digitalised secure and affordable energy system

The UK’s 2025 Ten-Year Infrastructure Strategy made recommendations to assess the communications needs of energy, water and transport. That assessment is currently being undertaken by the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA), with input from DCMS covering telecoms, and a recommendation to ministers is expected by the end of this year.

Energy Connect supports its utility members (electricity and gas transmission and distribution operators) in deploying resilient telecoms solutions. It has undertaken analysis of different communication approaches and considerations to support the future energy system. It focuses on the electricity distribution network operators and their mission critical use cases: real time grid monitoring and active network management, and grid restoration from a partial or national power outage.

The energy system is transforming - communications are a critical enabler

UK energy networks are undergoing unprecedented change. Historically power flowed in one direction from a relatively small number of large, centralised power stations. Today, generation, storage and flexible demand are increasingly connected directly to distribution networks, creating multidirectional power flows and requiring much greater real-time coordination and control. Without resilient communications visibility is lost, automation becomes ineffective, resilience decreases and restoration slows.

A key issue determining the right communications approach is that communications networks for monitoring, control and restoration cannot fail when power fails. It is exactly in these circumstances that visibility is needed to manage demand and supply and restart the electricity system. A national power outage is high on the UK national risk register, rated “Catastrophic” in terms of impact should it occur. Major outages, including the 2025 Iberian blackout, have highlighted the interdependence of communications and power. For this reason, the electricity grid requires 72 hours of power backup for communications underpinning functions critical to electricity system restoration.

There are different approaches, each with issues to consider

Reinforced public mobile networks can meet many of the energy networks’ use cases. For the most critical use cases though, a key consideration is delivering the 72 hour power resilience end-to end across the access network, backhaul and core across UK mobile sites. Prioritisation of guaranteed critical traffic, security and segregation, and availability and coverage of all assets, including remote and hard to reach assets, are additional considerations.

The Emergency Services Network (ESN) is another potential asset which could be considered, bringing a national footprint with significant power resilience planned. Several factors require consideration such as timing against ESN’s own delivery programme, and whether to place the emergency services as well as the energy sector’s critical communications on one shared infrastructure, creating a potential single point of failure.

A mission critical private mobile network is purposely designed to meet latency, security, power resilience, and coverage requirements including in remote areas. If built using low frequency and low-capacity spectrum, targeting just the most critical use cases, 72 hours of power resilience becomes an order of magnitude more affordable, and isolation of critical data is also built in. For this reason, Energy Connect has looked at other nations who have taken this approach.

International deployments of private networks

A number of European countries are deploying dedicated, mission critical private networks for their critical utilities, increasingly framed as a matter of energy security and national resilience. Deployments in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Poland have been built using 450 MHz spectrum.

Germany is an example which has designed, built and now operates a nationwide dedicated private 4G network for critical utility communications. It is owned and operated by 450connect, which is itself owned by the utilities that are the primary users of the network. Low frequency spectrum means only roughly 1,600 sites give around 96–98% geographic coverage, making the 72 hours end-to-end continued operation affordable.

Next steps

Resilient communications are a fundamental enabling component of energy modernisation, and the digital backbone of the future digitalised energy system, so government focus on the sector needs is welcome.

Energy Connect will continue to work with its members and other partners, including techUK, to ensure that the ministerial recommendations set forth by NISTA and DCMS later this year, alongside the refresh of the 10-Year Infrastructure Strategy next year, are aligned with the needs of both the energy and telecoms sectors.