EnergyAustralia has signed an agreement with Ericsson as part of the energy company’s smart grid rollout to use LTE for its 4G communications network.

EnergyAustralia Managing Director George Maltabarow said a 4G machine-to-machine communications network using WiMAX and LTE standards was being built across about 150 sites in Sydney, Central Coast and Hunter.

"A smart grid needs a communications platform to bring real-time data back from our substations, field devices and smart meters so we can turn it into useful information for field staff, engineers and households," he said.

The 4G network will transmit data between 12,000 smart monitoring devices, up to 3,000 mobile field computers and 200 major zone substations. EnergyAustralia is now rolling out a WiMAX communications network and will begin trials of an LTE platform at 15 sites next year, with the plan to move to a full LTE network.

Under the agreement, Ericsson as prime integrator will provide equipment, software and services to operate the network at 150 sites, including the WiMAX solution from Airspan Networks.

Earlier this year, EnergyAustralia signed an agreement with both Vivid Wireless and AUSTAR to acquire 7 MHz of 2.3 GHz spectrum for the utility’s 4G wireless communications network.

EnergyAustralia was recently chosen by the Australian Government to lead the Smart Grid, Smart City demonstration project to test Australia’s first fully integrated, commercial-scale smart grid. EnergyAustralia’s 4G network will cover the five locations that are part of the Smart Grid, Smart City project – Newcastle, Scone, Ku-ring-gai, Newington and Sydney CBD.