RuggedCom, a designer and manufacturer of industrial strength networks, in association with ABB, a provider of power and automation technologies, announced they will offer communication solutions for the Eastern Nebraska Public Power District Consortium's (ENPPDC) Smart Grid Initiative project.

The smart grid project will connect redundant operation centers to substations and downline devices over a two county, 1000 square mile area, increasing system visibility for customer outages and reducing the time needed to restore services.

"Stanton and Cuming Counties are committed to advancing our distribution network infrastructure and becoming a smart grid leader," said Elwood Moore, general manager, Cuming County Public Power District, in a statement. "We are looking forward to working with RuggedCom and are confident that their products and expertise will make this project a success."

As per the deal, the supply from RuggedCom will include RuggedMAX standards based broadband wireless base stations and subscriber units to ENPPDC. The wireless network infrastructure will be connected using RuggedCom's RuggedBackbone and RuggedSwitch product families and managed using the RuggedNMS Network Management Software.

"There continues to be increased interest from electric power utilities for our multi-service platform, RuggedMAX,” said Elik Jaeger, vice president, RuggedWIRELESS. “The solution, which is based on IEEE (News - Alert) 802.16e 4G broadband wireless technology and was intentionally built for mission critical applications, will be incorporated into the project and will ultimately reduce end to end latency and improve reliability."

Comprised of Cuming County and Stanton County Public Power Districts, the ENPPDC project includes procurement of wireless communications, supervisory control and data acquisition software, distribution automation software, intelligent reclosers and controls, automated regulator controls and irrigation load control devices.

Recently, BC Hydro announced that it selected RuggedCom’s RuggedMAX WiMAX (News - Alert) solution for smart grid deployment. RuggedMAX is a utility grade mobile WiMAX platform designed for the harsh environment of the electric substation by complying with standards such as IEEE 1613 and IEC (News - Alert) 61850-3.

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