Make the Switch With ICON VSN
Transition from analog to digital leased lines and improve your protection performance—without replacing your electric utility substation equipment.
Many telecom carriers are phasing out their analog leased line services and shifting their focus to digital services. However, that means electric utilities must pay escalating fees to continue using analog leased lines, deal with performance challenges of leased Ethernet, or go through the hassle of creating a private network.
The ICON Integrated Communications Optical Network with virtual synchronous networking (VSN) solves this challenge so that you can avoid high analog fees, get the benefits of modern technology, and continue using your existing equipment and protection schemes.
Making the Switch? Just Add ICON
ICON VSN functions as an edge device in your WAN. That means you just need to add an ICON on each end of the digital leased line and you can keep the equipment and protection schemes you already use in your substations.
Better Performance in the Digital World
No matter what, protection messages must have priority to ensure safe, secure operation of the power system. When you transition to a digital network, your protection speeds slow down by about ten times because of all the increased, competing network traffic.
However, when you switch to digital using ICON VSN, you get improved performance and reliability compared to analog leased lines. ICON VSN is fast enough for superior protection schemes, like direct transfer trip, and you’ll be operating through fiber instead of copper, which is better for reliability.
Save Your Company Time and Money
In the push to digital leased lines, some decisions just come down to whether they make financial sense. With ICON VSN, you can avoid the high fees telecom carriers are adding to analog leased line services and keep your current substation equipment. The time and money you’ll save combined with the reliability and performance improvements allow you to solve this challenge quickly and move on to other priorities.