Driven by the dual goals of the "dual carbon" strategy and the construction of a new-type power system, substations are accelerating their transition from traditional manned operations to unmanned and intelligent modes. As the "nerve center" connecting the equipment layer and the control layer, 5g cellular router serve not only as channels for data transmission but also as core infrastructure supporting remote monitoring, fault prediction, and autonomous decision-making. This article explores the technical characteristics, application scenarios, and innovative value of 5g cellular router from the perspective of the core needs of unattended substations, analyzing how they help the power industry achieve transformation goals of "reducing manpower, enhancing efficiency, and ensuring safety and controllability."
Unattended substations must achieve real-time equipment monitoring, rapid fault response, and efficient energy dispatch without on-site human intervention. Their core challenges can be summarized as follows:
Substations are subject to extreme conditions, including strong electromagnetic interference (e.g., from transformers and circuit breakers), high temperatures (equipment operating temperatures can exceed 80°C), and high humidity (exceeding 90% in some regions). Traditional commercial routers are prone to signal interruptions, data packet loss, or hardware damage, leading to monitoring system failures.
Substations need to collect dozens of types of data, such as voltage, current, temperature, and partial discharge, from sources including traditional instruments (e.g., RS485 interfaces), intelligent devices (e.g., IEC 61850 protocols), and video surveillance (e.g., RTSP streams). The data formats and transmission frequencies vary significantly, requiring unified access and processing.
Real-time Performance: Protective devices (e.g., differential protection) must complete fault judgment and action within 10 ms, requiring network latency below 5 ms.
Security: Power monitoring systems are critical national information infrastructure and must defend against security threats such as APT attacks and data tampering, meeting the requirements of China's Cybersecurity Classification Protection 2.0 (Level 3).
To meet the special needs of unattended substations, the selection of 5g cellular router should focus on evaluating the following technical indicators:
Wide Temperature Operation: Supporting operating temperatures from -40°C to 85°C (e.g., the 5G industrial router USR-G816), ensuring stable operation in severe cold in the north or extreme heat in the south.
Electromagnetic Interference Resistance: Certified to IEC 61850-3 and IEEE 1613 standards, ensuring no data errors under electromagnetic field strengths of 50 kV/m.
Protection Rating: Achieving an IP65 rating (dustproof and waterproof) to prevent short circuits caused by dust or rain.
Protocol Conversion: Built-in protocol stacks commonly used in the power industry, such as Modbus TCP/RTU, IEC 61850, DNP3, and OPC UA, enabling seamless integration of traditional equipment with intelligent systems.
Edge Computing: Supporting Python/Lua scripting for local data cleaning (e.g., removing outliers), compression (e.g., using LZW algorithms), and simple analysis (e.g., calculating equipment load rates), reducing the pressure on cloud transmission.
Case Study: A 220 kV substation reduced its data volume from over 3,000 temperature measurement points by 80% using the edge computing capabilities of an industrial router, cutting cloud storage costs by 60%.
5G Low Latency: Leveraging the URLLC (Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communications) characteristics of 5G networks to achieve microsecond-level communication between protective devices and control centers.
QoS Strategies: Prioritizing traffic based on ports, VLANs, or IP addresses to ensure that fault signals (e.g., trip commands) are transmitted with higher priority than surveillance video, avoiding action delays caused by network congestion.
Test Data: In a 500 kV substation, a 5G industrial router reduced differential protection action time from 15 ms to 8 ms, meeting national standards.
Encrypted Transmission: Supporting IPsec VPN, SSL VPN, and China's national cryptographic SM4 algorithm to ensure data confidentiality during public network transmission.
Access Control: Restricting unauthorized device access through 802.1X authentication, MAC address binding, and dynamic firewall rules.
Intrusion Detection: Integrating AI algorithms to analyze network traffic patterns in real time, automatically identifying DDoS attacks or malicious code injection.
Case Study: After deploying 5g cellular router, a provincial power grid company successfully intercepted 12 APT attacks targeting substation monitoring systems, reducing annual security incidents by 90%.
Centralized Management: Enabling batch configuration, firmware upgrades, and status monitoring through SNMP, TR069, or cloud platforms, reducing on-site inspection frequency.
Link Redundancy: Supporting dual SIM cards, dual 5G modules, and Ethernet backup, automatically switching to backup links when the primary link fails to ensure uninterrupted monitoring.
Fault Self-diagnosis: Built-in watchdog chips and hardware status monitoring functions can automatically restart crashed devices or report hardware fault codes.
Challenge: Traditional substations rely on manual inspections, making it difficult to detect early faults such as equipment overheating or partial discharge in real time, leading to unplanned outages.
Solution:
Deploy 5g cellular router with dual RS485/Ethernet interfaces (e.g., USR-G816) to connect temperature sensors, partial discharge monitors, and cameras.
Use the router's edge computing capabilities to analyze historical equipment data (e.g., temperature trends) in real time and predict fault probabilities using AI algorithms.
When abnormalities are detected, the router automatically triggers alerts (e.g., SMS, email) to operation and maintenance personnel and uploads fault locations and video clips to the management platform.
Effect: After implementation in a 110 kV substation, the time to detect equipment faults was reduced from an average of 4 hours to 10 minutes, and annual unplanned outages decreased by 70%.
Challenge: Inspection robots need to navigate autonomously, avoid obstacles, and collect data within substations. Traditional Wi-Fi solutions suffer from signal blind spots and roaming delays, increasing the risk of robot失控 (loss of control).
Solution:
Use 5G 5g cellular router to build a full-coverage network, achieving centimeter-level positioning for robots through the router's SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) algorithm.
Leverage the router's TSN (Time-Sensitive Networking) capabilities to ensure synchronized transmission of control commands (e.g., steering, acceleration) and sensor data (e.g., LiDAR, cameras), preventing collisions.
Combine the router's edge computing capabilities to process inspection data locally (e.g., meter reading recognition) and upload only key results to the cloud, reducing bandwidth requirements.
Effect: After deployment in an UHV substation, robot inspection efficiency increased by 50%, positioning errors decreased from 0.5 meters to 0.05 meters, and manual inspection frequency was reduced by 80%.
Challenge: The integration of distributed photovoltaic (PV) and energy storage systems has intensified power fluctuations in substations, requiring real-time adjustment of operation strategies to maintain grid stability.
Solution:
Deploy 5g cellular router near PV inverters and energy storage PCS units to collect voltage, current, and power data at grid connection points.
Use the router's data preprocessing capabilities to calculate metrics such as power factor and harmonic content, and upload them to the Energy Management System (EMS).
Combine EMS weather forecast data with AI algorithms to predict PV power generation for the next 24 hours, guiding substations to adjust transformer taps or switch capacitors.
Effect: After application in a county-level power grid, renewable energy consumption increased by 15%, power fluctuation amplitude decreased by 40%, and traditional thermal power unit peaking costs were reduced by RMB 2 million per year.
With the development of digital twin, AI, and blockchain technologies, 5g cellular router are evolving from "data channels" to "intelligent nodes," driving unattended substations toward higher levels of autonomous operation.
As data collection terminals for equipment, 5g cellular router can be deeply integrated with digital twin platforms:
Real-time Mapping: Synchronize the operational status of physical substations (e.g., equipment temperature, load curves) to virtual models, supporting remote monitoring and fault reproduction.
Simulation Testing: Simulate extreme operating conditions (e.g., short-circuit faults, high renewable energy generation) in virtual environments to verify the action logic of protective devices without interrupting actual operations.
Some high-end 5g cellular router have integrated lightweight AI models, enabling:
Intelligent Alarms: Automatically optimize alarm thresholds (e.g., adjusting transformer temperature alarms from 80°C to 75°C) by analyzing historical fault data, reducing false alarms.
Autonomous Control: When line overloads are detected, the router can directly issue current-limiting commands to intelligent switches instead of waiting for master station responses, reducing fault handling time from seconds to milliseconds.
5g cellular router can be combined with blockchain technology to ensure the immutability and traceability of monitoring data:
Data On-chain: Encrypt and store critical operation records (e.g., circuit breaker opening/closing times, parameter modification logs) on the blockchain to prevent tampering by internal personnel.
Audit Trails: Support automatic verification of data sources and integrity through smart contracts, meeting compliance requirements of power regulatory authorities.
Future 5g cellular router will integrate Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) technology, using 5G-A millimeter-wave bands to achieve passive sensing of substation equipment status (e.g., analyzing equipment structural health through signal reflections), further reducing sensor deployment costs.
Combined with AI algorithms, 5g cellular router will have dynamic bandwidth allocation, channel selection, and security policy adjustment capabilities. For example, when inspection robots are detected in operation, routers can automatically increase their communication priority to ensure the (priority) transmission of control commands.
Next-generation 5g cellular router will adopt low-power chips (e.g., RISC-V architecture) and dynamic power management technologies to automatically adjust operating modes based on network load. For example, the USR-G816 can reduce power consumption to 8 W in idle mode, only 40% of traditional routers, saving over 200 kWh per substation annually.
In the construction of unattended substations, 5g cellular router have transcended their role as "network devices" and have become core components connecting the physical and digital worlds, supporting real-time monitoring and intelligent decision-making. Through the integration of industrial-grade hardware design, multi-protocol compatibility, deterministic networks, and security protection technologies, 5g cellular router are driving substations toward autonomous operation modes of "self-awareness, self-diagnosis, and self-recovery." In the future, with the in-depth application of 5G, AI, and digital twin technologies, 5g cellular router will further empower the power industry to achieve transformation goals of "safety, efficiency, and greenness," providing critical infrastructure support for the construction of a global energy internet.
