Cisco IPv6 Mesh for Field Area Networks

Cisco has 8 Million+ endpoint deployments of Cisco CG-Mesh in AMI, Street Lighting etc. Based on our experiences and learnings, we have now enhanced CG-Mesh to provide even faster, redundant performance in the New Resilient Mesh.

The Cisco Resilient Mesh technology is already integrated into Distribution Automation Devices such as Cisco IR510 and IR530.

We are now working to get this same technology in other mesh use cases. If you are as excited as us about the New Resilient Mesh and would like to partner with us, please reach out to us at ipv6-mesh-sdk@external.cisco.com.

The Cisco Field Area Network is the communication network overlay for the electric distribution grid. The Cisco FAN strategy is to create a multiservice, secure, smart, reliable, and scalable communication network that enables a diverse set of use cases such as the ones below:

Use Cases

  • Advanced Metering (AMI): On-demand meter reading, real-time alert reporting, and shutdown of power to a single location require Point-to-Point (P2P) communication between the IoT Field Network Director (FND)/head-end and the electric meter and vice versa
  • Demand Response: Demand Response use case provides communication between home appliances and the utility head-end server through individual meters acting as applications’ gateways. This enables utilities to shave off Peak Demand - resulting in significant cost savings as well as prevent pollution by preventing dirty power sources from kicking in
  • Street Lighting: Many Street Light control vendors are integrating the Cisco IPv6 mesh into Street Light enabling a range of Smart City Use Cases
  • Providing connectivity to Distributed Energy Resources (Renewables) such as Solar and Wind
  • Electric Vehicles: Users need to have access to their individual vehicle charging account information while away from home to be able to charge their vehicles while on the road or while visiting friends. Verifying user and account information would require communication through the meter to the utility head-end servers from potentially a large set of nomadic vehicles being charged simultaneously from dynamic locations.
  • Oil and Gas: remote sensor monitoring of field equipment, tank level monitoring, etc.

Distribution Automation with IPv6 Mesh Endpoints

Cisco FAN also provides connectivity to subsets of Distribution Automation devices that need to communicate with each other in order to manage and control the operation of the electric grid in a given area, requiring the use of flexible communication with each other, including Peer-to-Peer in some cases.
 

  • Operational Efficiency
  • Volt VAR Management
  • Distributed Energy Resources Management
  • Self-Healing Grid