On October 15, a ceremony to mark the launch of what is described as the first “high-reliability 5G private network system for mining” was held in Beijing. It has been deployed in the Baodian coal mine in Shandong Province near Jining City in the central western portion of Yanzhou coalfield which uses longwall top coal caving. It was formerly operated by Yanzhou Coal, part of Yankuang Group, which merged with Shandong Energy Group in August 2020.
The system was developed by telecomms company China Unicom with mine owner and coal major Shandong Energy Group, who said it marked the fourth technological revolution of China’s coal industry stepping into the era of intelligent construction. It follows a pre-merger announcement in June that the province’s first underground coal mine 5G base station had been launched in Guotun coal mine, operated by Shandong Energy Linyi Mining Group. The company said then that the 5G network “has the advantage of high transmission rate and low latency. Armed with new technologies such as 5G, high-precision navigation and positioning, and 3D dynamic geological modeling, now Guotun mine is able to practice adaptive coal-cutting under complex geological conditions.”
The new 5G private network was independently designed and developed by Beidou Tiandi, a subsidiary of Shandong Energy Group which had also been part of Yankuang Group. The system mainly includes mine-use 5G core networks, 5G base stations, 5G base station controllers, and 5G high reliable controllers, 5G edge computing controllers, 5G CPE, 5G smart phones, etc., which can be widely used in extremely harsh coal mine production control scenarios. The new mobile system delivers faster data transmission inside the mine – reaching less than 20 milliseconds, compared with 3 to 4 seconds on 4G. The privately built 5G network is also “explosion-proof” compared with a general 5G set-up offered by some telecommunications network operators to some coal mining operations.
The Baodian 5G infrastructure was specifically implemented to resist line failure caused by changes in the underground environment and electromagnetic interference from various electrical equipment used inside the coal mine. The network has also been granted a national safety certificate for mine-use products.
Li Xiyong, Secretary of CPC Shandong Energy Group Committee and Chairman of Shandong Energy Group said the next plan of Shandong Energy is to, in line with the planning of a national digital economy, carry out a “strategy of innovation with focus on digitalisation of product innovation, intelligentisation of production and operation, and ecologicalisation of sectors. For which, Shandong Energy will strengthen strategic cooperation with high-tech companies, outstanding academician teams, universities and research and development institutes, and spare no efforts to build a digital and intelligent Shandong Energy.”
According to its “fourteenth five-year plan” it will invest RMB28 billion to establish a national coal industry internet joint innovation centre to create a “5G+smart coal mine solution” and build a coal industry internet ecology integrating chains of innovation with chains of industry “and make industrial internet bigger and stronger. Thus to contribute to the transformational upgrading and high quality development of the Chinese coal industry.”
Fu Qiang, CTO of China Unicom, said in his speech that Shandong Energy Group and China Unicom will give full play to the resource endowments and capabilities of both parties in the fields of “5G+smart mines” and “5G+smart coal chemicals.” Both parties agreed to further expand the scope of cooperation and promote the full implementation of high-reliability 5G private network systems for mining in the coal industry, and contribute to the development of new infrastructure, new technologies, new materials, new equipment, new products, and new business formats.
Academician Wang Guofa said in his speech that the actual situation of coal production was fully considered in the 5G private network system of Shandong Energy Group. The system would hit the difficult connectivity areas such as real-time reliable transmission, fast and intelligent decision-making. The system has realised reliable network deployment and reliable data computing. At the same time, it has also explored a number of 5G+ production application scenarios. He said the combination of 5G technology and coal mining technology can greatly improve the visualisation of coal mining data, the transparency of the mining process, the intelligentisation of mining equipment, and reduced worker numbers on the mining site.
