On March 30, local time, the State Grid Corporation of China completed the Saudi smart electric meter project, deploying and installing 5 million smart meters. This is another important achievement of China’s State Grid in serving the “Belt and Road” construction, which is of great significance to promote Sino-Saudi power cooperation and deepen the comprehensive strategic partnership between China and Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi smart meter project is a major project implemented by Saudi Arabia to realize “Vision 2030”. It is an important part of Saudi Arabia’s construction of smart grids and smart cities. It is also the largest single deployment of smart meter projects in the world. The project was signed on December 19, 2019, involving 9 regions in western and southern Saudi Arabia, including the main station system, 5 million smart meters, concentrators, external circuit breakers, supporting software development and hardware equipment production, supply, and solutions Design, transportation, storage, installation, commissioning, testing, etc. This is the first large-scale entry of China’s electricity consumption information collection system business into overseas markets and is implemented by China Power Technology Equipment Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of State Grid Corporation of China.
In order to ensure that the technical characteristics of the project meet the standards, the project terminal information communication adopts a dual-mode and narrow-band wireless communication scheme, which is quite different from the carrier scheme commonly used in China. Saudi Arabia has a special electricity environment and climate. There are no high-rise residential buildings, electricity lines are buried in the homes, high-power air conditioners are used throughout the year, channel noise is relatively large, and power line carrier environmental conditions are harsh. At the same time, the electricity consumption information collection system required by the owner is different from that in China in terms of the type, quantity, function, responsiveness, and ease of operation of reading data, and some indicators even exceed China’s current standards. The State Grid Corporation of China took nearly 10 months to solve various technical problems in the project implementation process, such as dual-mode solution networking, information reading and tuning under different communication solutions, and meeting the requirements of various collection performance indicators stipulated in the contract.
With the spread of the global new crown pneumonia epidemic, State Grid Corporation of China has taken advantage of its groupization to overcome the shortage of human resources, lack of construction production materials, and scattered on-site operations. It completed the first batch of material procurement, delivery and on-site testing within eight weeks. At the same time, the installation team mobilization, training and examination and induction work will be carried out. The installation and trial launch of the first meter will be completed on February 2, 2020; resources will be optimized to improve work efficiency, and the average daily number of meters installed has increased from 2000 at the beginning of the project to 60,000. The project department has always been ahead of other companies participating in the Saudi smart meter project in terms of meter installation and master station system development and deployment. It has realized the “double zero” of the project without stopping, steadily advancing, and preventing epidemics. The owner said that the “state grid speed” is amazing.
It is understood that the Saudi localized management model was adopted throughout the project implementation process to promote the integration of international general standards, China’s power grid rules and Saudi local rules. The metering master station system, smart meters and supporting equipment used in the project are all independently developed and manufactured by China. The total output of software and hardware and related service capacity exceeds 600 million US dollars. In the future, the output of related production capacity may be further realized in Saudi Arabia and surrounding areas.
Source: CableABC