Electricity Ashburton Substation IP Network

Electricity Ashburton is a community-owned electricity distribution company. They own and operate the electricity distribution network for the Ashburton district, which is bounded by the Rakaia River in the north and the Rangitata River in the south, and from the sea to the main divide. Electricity Ashburton also has a contracting division, undertaking construction and maintenance to overhead and underground high-voltage lines and substations.

As part of the asset management plan, the distribution network is progressively being upgraded to cope with increasing demand and to make best use of the existing infrastructure. Some automation and and monitoring capability is being incorporated into the electricity network where appropriate. In order to make optimal use of the automation and monitoring equipment, a communications network is also required.

Crystal Rock has been assisting Electricity Ashburton with some of their more difficult wireless network links and commmunications network integration requirements.

Physical Network

The substation communications network is currently being developed and expanded to include refurbished and new substations. Crystal Rock has developed and integrated wireless, Ethernet and serial communications to assist Electricity Ashburton in this endeavour.

The Crystal Router (Crux) and MikroTik components of the substation communications network are depicted in Figure 1.

Figure 1 - Crux Communications Network

To give an indication of scale, the distance between Carew and Ashburton substations is a little over 25 km.