verizon Grid Wide Utility Solution User Manual

Grid Wide Utility Solution
User Manual

New Customers’ Guide for getting started with Grid Wide Utility Solution

Section 1: Grid Wide Overview

On behalf of the entire Verizon team, we would like to thank you and welcome you as a customer of the Grid Wide Utility Solution. Verizon has designed Grid Wide as an end-to-end IoT managed service platform for Smart Metering.
Our intention was to create a platform that can enable utility customers to efficiently and cost-effectively configure, monitor, manage control & read grid system endpoints remotely.
Our vision for Grid Wide is to empower you to focus on what is important to you…. Management of your utility and your customers.
The Grid Wide Electric solution gives you near real-time information and insights that allow you to

• Enable digital transformation for more successful daily operations management
• Increase actionable intelligence and operational visibility, which can lead to better decision making
• Improve your utility’s ability to be more agile and improve overall customer satisfaction
• Decrease the need for unnecessary truck rolls, manual meter reads and in-person site visits, which can result in better cost optimization

Section 2: Grid Wide Benefits

The Grid Wide Utility Solution with its integrated, secure communications network and advanced metering platform is designed to help you:

• Improve power outage detection and resolution time
• Identify issues that can cause service reliability issues
• Fully automate meter reads and the collection of events
• Improve billing accuracy
• Perform on-demand reads
• Increase the ability to detect tampering and reduce electricity theft
• Reduce employee exposure to safety issues
• Streamline service connects and disconnects
• Perform over-the-air meter programming

Grid Wide is based on a highly scalable, distributed, and centrally managed intelligent policy-based architecture. The platform is designed to enable utilities to remotely provision, configure, monitor, manage, control, and read your utility distribution network Smart devices.
Here are some of the potential benefits you can realize after your solution is implemented See, understand, and act on what’s happening across your entire grid

• Make better decisions faster
• Proactively pinpoint and resolve issues more quickly
• Manage usage anomalies, detect outages, identify tampering and reduce energy waste
• Plan better for future growth
• Control costs and improve service
• Keep services up and running longer
• Serve customers better

Section 3: Understanding the power and security behind the Verizon

Network

LTE Category (Cat M1)
Verizon was the first North American carrier to offer nationwide LTE Category M1 service. LTE Cat M1 or LTE-M is an ideal solution for low power, wide area (LPWA) IoT connectivity. It combines a new LTE category designed for IoT that ensures low cost, with enhanced coverage and all the other benefits of LTE.
This allows performance and cost to be right-sized according to IoT needs.
Benefits:

• Longer battery life
• Potential for extended coverage and better in-building and in-ground penetration
• Low cost of ownership
• Fast time to market
• Highly scalable from 1 to millions of devices
• LTE equals proven security, reliability, and longevity

Features:

• Data and text only

• Power savings mode enables devices to go to sleep for a period of time off the network, but not forgotten

• Extended DRX
  – Enables an active device to check in with the network less often and saves battery power.

• Enhanced coverage
  – Through lower bandwidth, frequency hopping, and repetition, the link budget increases, enabling the potential for better performance in fringe areas and better penetration of in-building and in-ground locations.

• Simplified device certification
  – Verizon’s Open Development process for Cat M1 devices is both simpler and less expensive when compared to older technologies, which means going to market is quicker.

• Great replacement for older network technology
  – Migrate from CDMA or GSM to LTE, which is more secure, reliable, and has network longevity.

Additional Details

• Verizon lowers the barrier of entry to IoT
• LTE for IoT Cat-M1 and NB-IoT
• What’s next for IoT? LTE Cat-M1
• Looking for cost-effective, secure IoT connectivity options?

In addition to LTE connectivity, Grid Wide smart meters can be ordered with additional radio types for sub-metering and infill connectivity where an LTE connection cannot be established.
Please refer to the Grid Wide LoRa Communications document for more detail

Section 4: Keeping you & your information protected with Verizon Wireless

Security parameters

Verizon Security
IoT devices and applications are no longer within their infancy stages and so with that comes the inherent challenges of managing security aspects associated with IoT. The fact is IoT devices can often be deployed in greater numbers than traditional mobile devices and at times in remote locations. This can create scenarios in which they are vulnerable,  whether it be at the physical device level or at the network level. Verizon is very much aware of these scenarios and as a result has created a multi-layered approach to security for IoT. At Verizon security can be found at the hardware level, network level and at application level.

Hardware-layer protection
Verizon has IoT Security Credentialing which creates and manages trusted credentials for your devices so that only authentic firmware, applications, and configurations can be deployed and installed on them. This trusted authentication helps keep hackers and malicious code out of your IoT ecosystem. IoT Security Credentialing also adds an over-the-top layer of security and solution-wide encryption that helps protect the devices and applications and helps prevent your data from being changed or viewed by untrusted actors.

Network Layer protection
The network is the foundation of a secure experience. It acts as the primary barrier to ensure that threats are blocked before reaching a customer. We leverage a variety of tools  to ensure the network is secure and reliable when you need it.

• Identity and access management
• Vulnerability management
• Risk management
• Network monitoring and incident response
• Encryption to protect data traversing the network

Grid Wide Platform as a Service Security
The Grid Wide platform implements a defense-in-depth approach to deliver a robust security framework based on three foundations: architecture, process, and response.
Architecture:
The Grid Wide security framework architecture is based on an N-tiered architecture with security built into all layers. It incorporates proven and broadly adopted Federal  Information Processing Standard (FIPS) and U.S. Department of Commerce NIST-approved cryptographic standards, algorithms, and processes, and proven open-standards-based network protocols (IEEE, IETF, ITU, 3GPP).

Process:
The components of the Grid Wide security processes address both deliberate attacks and inadvertent compromises of the information infrastructure across all phases of device development, manufacturing, and deployment lifecycles.

Response:
The components of the Grid Wide security mitigation and response strategies include the implementation of monitoring and reporting of security events, as well as performing white hat security audits and monitoring trusted sources of vulnerability information and rapid patch deployment.
Refer to the Grid Wide Security Whitepaper for more details.

Section4: Grid Wide Implementation & Integration procedures

Implementation
Implementing Grid Wide within your utility requires consideration of many elements including:

• smart meter purchasing
• smart meter programming
• first article testing
• connectivity evaluation
• deployment planning
• software integration
• platform configuration

For details, refer to the following documents

• Grid Wide smart meter ordering guide
• Grid Wide first article checklist
• Grid Wide software integration process
• Smart meter fact sheet
• Grid Wide implementation process

Software Integration process –
Integration between Verizon Grid Wide and any of the utility’s back-end software applications such as a Customer
Information System (CIS), Outage Management System (OMS), etc. is outside of the scope of the Grid Wide
Implementation contract. Instead, requirements for any software integration work to be performed by Verizon will be defined in a separate Statement of Work (SOW).

This Software Integration Statement of Work will include the following information:

• Utility software to be integrated along with any components, if relevant. E.g., NISC iVUE Customer Care and Billing (CC&B)

• Use cases addressed. This includes the following:
  o Meter Data to be published, e.g., Billing Register reads, Interval reads, Etc.
  o File format, e.g., NISC Daily Shift Read file format, CMEP, MV90, Etc.
  o Frequency, e.g., daily, weekly, monthly
  o File transfer mechanism, e.g., SFTP, HTTPS

• Associated costs for work to be performed by Verizon

Integration Project Process
A summary outline for the Integration process includes:

1. Identify Utility and Software Vendor contacts for an Integration project
2. Joint Integration kick-off call to define Integration requirements and details
3. Sharing information for Integration configurations and credentials
4. Build process to configure Integration elements
5. Test and validate Integration connectivity and communications
6. Test and validate software system functions with test meters
7. Completion and project closure
8. Customer sign off of Integration User Acceptance for billing

Refer to the Grid Wide software integration process document for more details

Section 5: How to use the Grid Wide platform

This section is dedicated to assisting you with getting the most from the Grid Wide Utility solution platform. Please note there are in-depth guides referenced below to aid you in accomplishing this goal. If at any point you still require assistance with navigation around the platform please reach out to your Grid Wide Account Representative for assistance.

For details, refer to the following documents

• Developer Guide & Tools
• Grid Wide User Guide

Section 6: Grid Wide Service APIs

Customer Support Key Performance Indicators
Verizon provides customer support for the Grid Wide platform based on the following severity levels:

Severity Level| Description| Initial Response Time| Action Response Time| Action
---|---|---|---|---
Severity 1 – Urgent| A catastrophic situation causing total system failure or unrecoverable data loss; alternatively, an urgent question regarding a critical system issue and requiring prompt Maintenance Services advice.| 15 minutes| 2 hours| An urgent situation requiring continuous around-the-clock attention from the necessary Grid Wide staff is required until the reported defect is satisfactorily resolved.
The defect resolution will be provided as a software patch release or a suggested workaround solution.
Ongoing communication with the end-user is continuous to the extent appropriate.
Severity 2 – Serious| A serious situation causing disruption to the normal operation of the system or a significant part thereof; alternatively, an important question requiring prompt Maintenance Services advice.| 90 minutes| 12 hours| Every attempt will be made to find a solution to the reported defect as quickly as practical.
The defect resolution will be
provided as a software patch release
or a suggested workaround solution.
Severity 3 – Minor| A non-critical situation or one for which a workaround has already been identified.| 2 days| 15 days| A workaround solution or an advice statement of when the reported defect is likely to be resolved will be provided to the end customer.
The defect resolution will be provided in a future software upgrade or update version release.

Refer to the Grid Wide Service KPI Support document for more details

Section 7: Customer Training resources available

• We are working on updating our online Grid Wide training materials. Please check back later.

Section 8: Utility customer information

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
When you deploy Grid Wide, some of your customers/members will have questions. This list of FAQ examples will give utilities the ability to proactively provide information of interest.
Please refer to the FAQ document for more details

Radio Frequency (RF) Information
Some of your customers/members will express concerns about the utilization of radio frequency (RF) communications with their advanced meters. Please refer to the  Answering Questions about IoT and RF document.

Section 9: Identification of sales & support team

Sales/Billing/Contracts contacts
For Grid Wide Sales support, please contact your Verizon Emerging Technologies Specialist (ETC) or your Verizon account manager.

Grid Wide support
Grid Wide support can be accessed through different means.

• The online help option offered through the Grid Wide portal is available 24 hours/day.
• If you are unable to access online help or have an emergency, calls can be placed to 800-724-1431 from 6 am to 5 pm Pacific time, Monday through Friday. Severity 1 or 2  issues will be supported after hours.
• You will also be provided with a tiered list of support contacts that you can reach for support as well. Your first call should always be to your Emerging Technologies Specialist (ETC).

**Section 10: PR/Marketing Opportunities

**

We appreciate your business and thank you for choosing Verizon as your trusted partner. If you are interested in joint marketing opportunities such as Press Releases or  Customer Success Stories, please contact your Emerging Technologies Consultant (ETC) or account manager to discuss.

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