WPD
In action
The power of communication
Western Power Distribution has recently taken over Central Networks, which it runs from headquarters in Castle Donington, Leicestershire
Having recently upgraded its PMR system, electricity company Western Power Distribution is about to extend its MPT trunked radio coverage to the Midlands. David Taylor visited WPD’s Leicestershire base to learn about the project
I
t has been a busy year or so for Western Power Distribution (WPD) and especial- ly busy for Kevan Scott. Kevan manages
Surf Telecoms – an off shoot of WPD set up to look after its internal communications. In July, the utility company completed a
£5 million upgrade of its radio network, a key resource in its task of maintaining the supply to customers in South West England and Wales. T is came just over a year after the company
About the author
David Taylor is deputy editor of Land Mobile
had taken over the Central Networks compa- ny, extending its reach to electricity consumers in an area which now stretches all the way from Land’s End to Skegness. “Essentially, Western Power Distribution is
the full name. Distribution is the key, really – we don’t sell electricity, we just distribute it out to customers”, explains Kevan. “We now eff ectively look after a third of the country. It’s equivalent to four of the old electricity boards, so it’s a big patch..” For its recent radio upgrade in the South
West of England and Wales, WPD selected Team Simoco’s Xfi n trunked radio technology, and Kevan is about to start work on rolling out a new network into the Midlands. Last year, WPD absorbed Central Networks, successor to the old East Midlands Electricity Board – but Central Networks did not come with a radio communication system of its own. It had abandoned the electricity industry’s old Mar- coni VHF radio network and was relying solely on mobile phones.
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Technology choices Several technologies were considered for WPD’s initial upgrade four or fi ve years ago. “We looked at Tetra systems and we looked at UHF solutions as well as the VHF”, re- members Kevan. “But the Tetra system and the UHF system needed so many more radio sites than we had, and we then settled back on our VHF system. I think it was about three times for UHF and about six times for Tetra or something like that, which was huge.” Andy Grimmett, chief technologist of Si-
moco, comments that a lot of this was due to the terrain in Western Power’s area. “Hills and valleys were diffi cult to cover. We did some propagation analysis work at UHF and Tetra and it just wasn’t viable.” “In the South-West and Wales, we already
had 103 radio sites that we could use, and had used before with our previous system”, Kevan continues. “So we confi rmed the design with Team Simoco’s help. We were happy with the South West design because the guy who de-
LAND mobile September 2012
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