
Electric utility operational technology (OT) networks have largely transitioned from legacy and time-division multiplexing (TDM) Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) networks into modern Internet Protocol (IP) and Ethernet packet networks. The SONET and TDM network technology served the electric utility OT wide area network (WAN) well over several decades, but few vendors still support this technology, driving network modernization efforts. At the same time, internet service providers (ISPs) are phasing out the same legacy systems and further decreasing the market for this technology and associated components.
Data needs continue to rise for grid operations, especially as more communications are needed to control and monitor distribution assets. Because of their increasing size and complexity, electric utility OT WAN networks are becoming nearly impossible to simulate in a physical lab environment. Without the capability to test at some sort of scale, change implementation is being forced into production OT networks.
Implementing changes on a production network carrying traffic needed to operate the bulk electric system introduces unnecessary risks to the OT network. These changes could include:
- Firmware upgrades
- Policy updates
- New protocol implementations
- Architecture changes
- Network optimizations
It has been common practice to deploy and test network changes in physical lab implementations to determine how they will impact the production network, typically at a reduced scale. There are now alternatives to physical labs for testing changes, including testing at scale, without the cost, power and space of a physical lab. Using a digital twin of the OT network can address many challenges to testing in a physical lab and provide a more accurate replica of the scale of a production network, leading to more reliable simulation results.
An OT digital twin network can be implemented virtually, increasing flexibility and agility when conducting network simulations and testing. It is possible to scale up or down in a virtual environment to suit the simulation’s or test’s needs. These OT digital twin networks can be replicas of the production network, so test results provide increased knowledge of overall production impacts, increasing confidence in network change rollouts and minimizing overall risk introduced to the OT production networks.
The use of virtualization technologies to implement electric utility OT digital twin networks will lead to increased accuracy of simulation results, reduce risk introduced to the production network, optimize network planning, and be crucial to efficiently and effectively operating these networks.