Dadu River Company Completes China’s First Hydropower Communication Backbone Network

On July 20, Dadu River Hydropower Development Co., Ltd. under China Energy finished construction of the first ultra-large capacity OTN optical fiber communication backbone network in China, which upgraded the original 2.5G bandwidth network to a 40G bandwidth communication network. This network serves as a large data transmission channel within a distance of more than a thousand kilometers in the region, which improved the integrated communication efficiency of river basin dispatching in flood season and ensured the smooth transmission of safety monitoring data.

OTN optical transmission network is based on wavelength division multiplexing technology and organized in optical layer, marking a new generation of backbone transport network. In recent years, with the company’s continuous efforts in advancing smart enterprise construction, the hydropower stations in the basin are becoming smarter, so the original 2.5G independent broadband can no longer meet the demand of Chengdu Command Center for remote monitoring and dispatching of hydropower stations.

To further improve the dispatching and centralized control efficiency of cascade hydropower stations in the river basin, and ensure the smooth transmission of emergency dispatching instructions in flood season, the company has built an optical fiber communication backbone network covering the Chengdu-based cascade dispatching building and all the power stations affiliated to the company within a distance of 2,000 kilometers, and upgraded the original 2.5G independent broadband in the river basin to an ultra-large capacity communication backbone network with 40G bandwidth. It has completely broken the bottleneck of limited communication bandwidth and ensured full coverage of smooth transmission in the river basin, so as to help upgrade the parent company’s intelligence capability.