From the outside it seems simple: The sun shines on the solar panels, the solar panels produce electricity, everyone happily uses green energy. While it is true that sun plus solar panels equals electricity, in use behind the scenes is the latest in high-tech industrial communications equipment. Unlike most power generation facilities and substations that are just beginning to upgrade their old equipment to leverage the newest networking gear, solar installations have the luxury of being able to start with the newest communications equipment from the get go.
Like any type of generation facility, optimizing equipment for maximum safety, stability and minimized electrical loss is an important concern. This is achieved by being able to monitor all critical infrastructure reliably. To do so, having a solid network infrastructure is the key. As it relates to solar installations, Ethernet networking is the preferred way to achieve efficient communications across the entire system. However, it can come as a surprise to find that even today, not all equipment is Ethernet-ready. Fortunately, device servers, Ethernet I/O modules, and other forms of specialized communication devices are available to help with the conversion of old serial and I/O-based connections to Ethernet, thus enabling taking full advantage of a newly installed Ethernet communications network backbone.
More than ever before, the network is now the critical backbone of all communications. From simple devices like IP phones, wireless access points and video security systems, to the more complex like reclosures, synchrophasors and protection relays, almost everything can now be connected to the Ethernet and needs to function with utmost reliability. At this point in the game, remove the electrical engineering hat and don one of an Ethernet networking engineer.
Constructing and engineering the appropriate network infrastructure is critical to ensure the reliability for a mission-critical installation. Strong hardware with strong redundancy and backup mechanisms is the fundamental starting point for ensuring Ethernet reliability. The next major factor then becomes the management of the Ethernet traffic itself. A single network using simple switches alone is not going to cut it. Simple unmanaged switches can be used to segment networks but managed switches offer far more flexibility and power to influence performance of the network as a whole. Industrial-grade managed switches that leverage the latest monitoring technology and a well-thought-out topology would be the way to go for solar installations. Managed switches, for example, make it possible to implement redundant topologies such as STP, RSTP, Ring and Chain, SNMP, quality of service (QoS), IGMP snooping, data logs, and other functions that ensure efficient, secure, and reliable handling of network traffic.
The most important attribute of a managed switch is redundancy. Business users can generally withstand momentary failures in email or network communication. 99.999% uptime was something to strive for on these networks, but if they fell short of this goal, the worst thing that would happen was some inconvenience for a lot of users, not immediate and substantial financial loss. Commercial redundancy protocols (STP and RSTP) were built with this mentality, and these same standard protocols are still in use in the mainstream. Using these protocols on a managed switch that is configured correctly recover a network in less than thirty seconds.
For mission-critical applications where interruptions in operation or communication can result in immediate and substantial losses, a thirty second network recovery time would be absolutely unacceptable. This is why the Ethernet networks used in solar and power-related applications cannot achieve sufficient reliability with redundant communication technology that is based on commercial IT technology. To address this, a number of Ethernet switch manufactures have developed proprietary redundancy protocols based on Ring and Chain topologies to achieve near-instant network recovery times. For example, with one of these proprietary protocols in place, a large 250-switch network can recover from a failed network segment in less than 20 ms. Of course, real-world application testing and verification is an additional and important step to ensure the desired network performance.
This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the technologies available for today’s mission-critical Ethernet networks. Many other managed Ethernet switch features are important and need to be considered. Fortunately, the number of manufacturers and experts in this field is growing, and new features and functions are being developed every day to make it easier for the industrial user. The technology is ready and available to take advantage of the latest developments in both solar power and Ethernet networking.
By: Jim Toepper, Product Marketing Manager at Moxa Americas
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