CITY MANAGER AUTHORITY PROCUREMENT AWARDS
ACTION REQUESTED:
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Approve the award of Cooperative Procurement 23-283, Cellular Service, to Cellco Partnership dba Verizon Wireless for an amount not to exceed $49,342.54 and for a one-year term (2024)
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DEPARTMENT: Electric Utility
SUBMITTED BY: Brian Groth, Director
BACKGROUND:
The Electric Utility (Utility) utilizes gatekeepers to aggregate meter reads from local neighborhoods and deliver them to the Automated Meter Infrastructure (AMI) headend located in its datacenters. The AMI system leverages both a 2.4Ghz/5Ghz Tropos network and a Verizon Private Cloud for its communication backhaul between the gatekeepers and the AMI headend. The AMI system currently has 35 gatekeepers utilizing the Tropos network and 39 gatekeepers utilizing the Verizon cellular network.
The Electric Utility also maintains a Distribution Automation (DA) system used to isolate and restore segments of the electric grid during a power outage, minimizing the impact seen by Naperville residents and businesses. The DA network uses a 900mhz radio network to allow each field device to communicate with each other and report telemetry data to SCADA.
DISCUSSION:
The Tropos network and the DA radios utilized by AMI and DA respectively have reached their end of life. Replacement parts for both products are no longer available and present a large financial and operational risk to the Utility if field devices were to fail. As a result, the Utility has two independent projects in its 2024 CIP to upgrade the legacy communication infrastructures to Verizon Cellular.
The Utility plans to expand the utilization of the Verizon cellular network to an additional 35 Gatekeepers as it depreciates the Tropos network in its AMI communication infrastructure. The Utility will also be deploying an additional 40 cellular devices in 2024 for its DA radio upgrade project.
The Verizon cellular charges for the existing AMI gatekeepers and both upgr...
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