Tales of Wind #13 - Refurbishment of communication infrastructure

(Replacement of old ADSL lines with industrial 4G routers)

Originally, wind farms were often equipped with ADSL lines from Orange. These telecom lines had 2 purposes :

• Enabling Greenbyte access to the SCADA data
• Enabling the O&M provider access to the SCADA

In the past few years, Greensolver witnessed the termination of several windfarm ADSL lines. Orange is progressively removing and putting out of service the copper lines in France.
As this type of internet connection appeared not flexible and reliable enough, the solution is to install a 4G/5G internet router replacing the ADSL lines.

Advantage :

• In case of loss of a primary operator, the SIM card can switch to another available operator, preventing a loss of communication with the wind farm.

Methodology :

• The router must consider potential existing O&M provider router;
• The router installation require some cabling and IP settings from the O&M provider;
• A back-up power supply (UPS) can be installed additionally to the router to guarantee the remote connection to the wind farm and the “télégestion” even in case of a grid event.

Written by Technical and Financial Asset Management Team