Renewable Power Generation
Data communications for renewable power generation
Power plants that generate electricity from wind turbines or solar panels must ensure continuous operation to optimise their performance, given the seasonality of the power source. It is therefore critical that their data communications network is highly reliable, despite being exposed to harsh operating conditions including wide temperature variations and high levels of electromagnetic interference. Wind or solar farms can include many hundreds of network units, so they must be easy to configure, set up and maintain. The network topology must also be easy to scale and replicate, as manufacturers and integrators often deliver hundreds of turnkey wind or solar farms worldwide. Security is a crucial demand because unauthorised access into one switch could harm the entire network. However, installing individual firewalls in each unit would lead to project costs becoming unfeasible.
Westermo solution
With its Lynx and RedFox switches, Westermo offers a unique and robust solution to the specific demands of renewable power generation. These Westermo switches are developed for reliable operation in the most extreme environments and offer the highest mean time between failure (MTBF) on the market. Westermo’s WeOS operating system enables layer 3 networking solutions with lightning fast recovery time, while its WeConfig network configuration tool makes it possible to easily configure and update hundreds of devices simultaneously from a centralised location, and to create robust and scalable horseshoe topologies. All layer 3 products offer a high level of cybersecurity to harden the network against unauthorised access. Set-up of cybersecurity configurations can be easily performed with WeConfig, with all unused ports in each device blocked with a single action and firewall rules being configured on each port. WeConfig also enables remote firmware upgrades, thereby saving time and reducing costs.
Key benefits
- Westermo switches provide outstanding reliability and the longest operating hours
- Topologies easy to scale and replicate with WeConfig
- High level of cybersecurity
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Mikael Lindahl
Network application specialist
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