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Communication Network Architectures based on EPON for Offshore Wind Power Farm

Authors:
Mohamed A. Ahmed
Young-Chon Kim

Keywords: smart grid; SCADA; EPON; power budget; wind power farm.

Abstract:
Wind power gains a great attention among renewable energies because of its relative cost competitiveness and the maturity of the technology. This paper proposes the EPON-based communication network architectures as a promising candidate to replace the current switched-based networks for wind power farm (WPF). EPON-based networks combine the advantages of both the optical network technology and Ethernet technology. The proposed WPF network architecture is based on the electric transmission topology and consists of a central optical line terminal (OLT) placed in the control center and optical network units (ONUs) deployed on the wind turbines (WTs) side. There are no active electronic devices used between the OLT and the WT-ONUs to reduce the cost and complexity of maintenance and deployment. Two different EPON-based architectures for an offshore WPF have been proposed and compared in terms of optical power budget, path loss and network cost. The power budget is analyzed to ensure that the received signal power is enough to maintain acceptable performances even though the lengths of communication link between the control center and WTs are different. The total path loss includes the power reduction from fiber, connectors and splitters. The results show that the received power of each WT in EPON-based architecture satisfies the power budget requirements of IEEE standard. Also, the analysis of network elements shows that EPON-based architectures have a cost effective solution.

Pages: 15 to 20

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2013

Publication date: March 24, 2013

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-412X

ISBN: 978-1-61208-259-2

Location: Lisbon, Portugal

Dates: from March 24, 2013 to March 29, 2013