NREL, Anterix, and a 9 member Industry Advisory Board comprised of 7 leading utilities and 2 industry associations, successfully piloted a private LTE network for utility control applications. NREL showed that the wireless network successfully communicated critical protection-related signals, even under congested and weak-signal scenarios.

This High Impact NREL study had the goal to develop a realistic private LTE wireless communications capability, integrated with an Advanced Distribution Management System (ADMS), for the evaluation of secure, cost effective, and resilient grid operations.