Background
This power generation company is now the biggest private sector power supply company in Turkey with around 3,600 MW of installed capacity. The company distributes its electricity to 21 million people in 21 provinces. It is also involved in the trading of electricity and natural gas and generation of steam.
The Challenge
The power generation company's power plants, power transmission infrastructure and other facilities are dispersed across Turkey. Ensuring safe and reliable communications between the different sites and teams spread around the country is critically important. The front-line maintenance personnel urgently need reliable voice and video communication systems to keep in contact with different types of teams in the field and to liaise with headquarters.
The power generation company's facilities are often located in harsh environments, so the working conditions are often challenging for personnel. Staff, therefore, need sturdy, dust- and water resistant smart radio terminals to ensure reliable communications and to help protect them if they get into trouble. Working in the energy sector is a high-risk occupation. In order to ensure the safety of front-line personnel, the power generation company wanted to deploy an on-site video solution during
maintenance work, which was capable of streaming video images back to headquarters in real time. The video solution was also needed to enable managers at headquarters to conduct real-time remote guidance and to hold multi-party meetings with front-line personnel whenever necessary.
The Solution
Hytera’s smart Push-to-Talk over Cellular (PoC) technology was chosen as the solution. PoC provides strong mobile communications using commercial mobile operator broadband networks. The choice of PoC meant the power generation company could access a much wider area network than if it had chosen a land mobile radio (LMR) solution and it saved money as it did not have to deploy its own base stations and other LMR network infrastructure.
Two types of Hytera devices have been deployed. Front-line maintenance staff have been issued with Hytera’s top-of-the-range VM780 body worn cameras (bodycams). The VM780 has a small, slim, lightweight and portable design suitable for front-line maintenance personnel to use.
As well as integrating a body camera with a remote speaker microphone to provide video dispatch and real-time video streaming over 3G/4G/Wi-Fi, it also doubles as a PoC device, so users can make push-to-talk (PTT) voice calls and initiate an emergency alarm in mission critical conditions.
The device features a 216° rotatable camera, 1080p high definition image and video capture. The VM780 also supports AES256 advanced encryption technology to protect all the captured evidence in local storage or during transmission.
Headquarters staff were issued with Hytera’s PNC550 smart PoC terminal. The device adopts a smartphone form factor with a full 5-inch multi-touch screen and IP68 rated and has a 1.2m drop-proof design.
The Results
The choice of Hytera’s versatile and flexible PoC technology helped the power generation company reduce the cost of network construction, as PoC operates over existing public mobile network operator infrastructure. The PoC solution provides safe, encrypted communications and a reliable, highly available network.
The PoC solution has helped improve daily work efficiency in the field and at the company's headquarters. The PNC550 and VM780 help keep front-line maintenance staff safe by providing instant PTT communications and supporting additional safety measures such as Man Down, Lone Workers and GPS location-based services.
Hytera entered the Turkish market in 2006 and is now widely recognized by clients in many different industries as a highly reliable provider of professional communications solutions, including the energy sector. Hytera was also able to customize its solution and add industry specific apps to greatly improve the customer experience and user satisfaction.
