Wind Farm Network – High Reliable SCADA System for Wind Turbines Based on Redundant Ring

For wind farm operating system, it is basically essential to keep everything work efficiently and reliably, without error or unacceptable delay. This relies on a strong enough networking system which can not only work robustly under harsh outdoor conditions, but can also meet customers’ real needs.

• For example, the PLC which locates at top windmill and is responsible for monitoring the status of wind turbine always need a short interval of within 50ms during communication , some even require 25 ms, this placed a limit to the recovery time of fiber Ethernet. The shorter the recovery takes, the stronger the network is and less cost will be incurred to the maintenance of wind farm. 
• For another example, every wind farm site usually has hundreds of windmills, and this brings a key issue to owners - how to effectively manage the massive and different kinds of data flow sent by the monitors of each windmill? 

The operating environment and work mode of windmills put forward strict requirements for Ethernet networking: 

• Dozens or hundreds of windmills are centrally controlled, so the network needs to be rapid and stable 
• Windmills work year by year in harsh environment, any abnormalities need to be reported timely, so the network should be real-time and robust 
• To ensure normal running of windmills, preventive maintenance is necessary. It will reduce lost resulted by windmill fault. In the future, more and more monitoring and analysis functions should be added, such as video and state inspection, to provide advanced network management functions which should be contained by each single network node.

Network Topology

InHand ISM 2008D and ISM 3010D industrial managed Ethernet switches can help windmill companies and owners to realize real-time remote monitoring and management, and significantly enhance the reliability of the whole communication system :

• At the top of the windmill, ISM 2008D can gather and transfer controlling and other IP data to the base of the windmill
• At the base of the windmill, ISM 3010D receives data from the top of the windmill via fiber
• ISM 3010D switches build up a redundant ring network linking nearby windmills together and provide a recovery time of less than 5 ms (unrelated to hop counts)

• ISM 2008D, managed DIN-Rail mounting industrial Ethernet switch with 8 ports
• ISM 3010D, managed DIN-Rail mounting Gigabit industrial Ethernet switch

ISM2008D and ISM3010D are professional industrial networking switches that are highly rugged and durable: 

• Passed highest level EMC test comparing with contemporary managed switches 
• Operating Temperature: -40 ~ +85 °C, Humidity: 95 % RH 
• DIN-rail mount for wind farm cabinet installation 
• Aluminum alloy housing: Fanless cooling technology, IP40 protection (non-porous design prevent dust & sand damage), optional for PCB protective coating 
• Support world’s fastest RING backup technology (recovery time of whole ring less than 5ms without considering delays caused by increasing switch hops). When the network fails, it can smoothly switch to the redundant backup link to ensure communication un-affected
• Gigabit fiber network bandwidth and QoS service ensure efficient transmission of video, state inspection and voice monitoring data