Every industry has its own challenges, but for wind farm operators, these challenges come supersized. The Energy industry is one that has been quick to capture the benefits brought about by digitization. In fact, CIOs reported that in 2019, their primary technology focus is on data analytics, including predictive analytics. Implementing IoT to collect and analyze data can improve the performance and effectiveness of individual wind turbines.
The benefits of collecting and analyzing maintenance data are widely understood. Data analysis can provide better predictability, enabling operators to understand when equipment is beginning to run into issues and enabling preventative measures to be taken at an optimal time. This translates into an average savings of 40% on maintenance costs. For instance, instead of spending tens of thousands of dollars to bring a crane onsite to repair a single faltering turbine, predictive analytics can also indicate other turbines that may be approaching issues, making it possible for those to be addressed pre-emptively while the necessary equipment and personnel are already on-site.
CHALLENGES
While the benefits are clear, there are a number of logistical challenges that must be overcome in order to implement data analytics in wind farm environments. These include:
- Distributed and difficult-to-access locations: Geographically distributed and several hundred feet tall, accessing equipment inside of wind turbines requires special equipment, trained personnel, and is expensive.
- Operating environments are exposed and inhospitable: Harsh environments may include extreme weather and highly variable temperatures require rugged hardware capable of withstanding extremes.
- Limited onsite IT resources: Extreme and inaccessible environments prevent IT from engaging in normal processes to onboard, update, and troubleshoot devices.
REQUIREMENTS
In order to solve the environmental challenges, wind farm operators must implement a solution that will meet several requirements:
- Hardware must be rugged and capable of withstanding harsh and extreme environments.
- Device onboarding must be zero-touch and not require highly trained IT staff.
- All management activities, including updates, activating/deactivating ports, and troubleshooting must be conducted remotely.
- Support for applications must include both existing legacy and modern cloud applications and be able to connect to any cloud.
- Comprehensive security capabilities must ensure protection in remote environments where device integrity cannot be ensured.
- Architecture must be able to accommodate additional devices and applications as future requirements are identified.
SOLUTION
Lanner SilosBreaker™ Edge Security Kit provides seamless endpoint authentication, software property protection, service lifecycle management and advanced device/application monitoring capabilities to enable high-availability, mission-critical operations and mitigate a variety of cyberattacks.
Security Gateway LEC-6041
Lanner’s security gateway, LEC-6041, is designed to protect the communication in both IT and OT domains. LEC-6041 series is empowered by Intel Atom x7-E3950 or Celeron N3350 for low power consumption and capable processing performance. As a rugged firewall deployed in challenging environments, LEC-6041 is compliant with IEC 61850-3 and IEEE 1613 certification, as well as 1.5 KV magnetic isolation protections for LAN port and 15KV ESD Protection for I/O ports. The system can operate in a wide range of operating temperature from -40°C to 70°C.
To ensure secure communication from both device-to-gateway and gateway-to-IT layers, Lanner security gateway LEC-6041 is protected with built-in security features and high availability features, including:
- Secure Boot and Intel Boot Guard
- Encrypted Platform Identity API
- TPM 2.0 onboard withTSS2.0 compliant API
- Programmable LAN bypass technology
ZEDEDA Edge Virtualization Software
ZEDEDA offers 100% cloud-managed deployment, operation, and security automation for your real-time edge applications. ZEDEDA provides a consistent, automated, hardware agnostic, and secure operating model for mass-deployed edge devices and applications – eliminating manual configuration processes, requirements for on-site expertise, or any need to manually update software.
BENEFITS
Wind farm operators can leverage the SilosBreaker™ Edge Security Kit to solve their unique environmental challenges and launch predictive maintenance projects in a manner that provides complete visibility, management, and protection. Together, Lanner and ZEDEDA provide:
- Rugged, secure and high powered hardware: Designed to withstand the toughest conditions, Lanner devices are able to withstand extreme weather and are operable in wide ranges of temperature.
- Zero-touch provisioning: Simply connect power in the field and the device will connect to the cloud and receive the relevant configuration details. Device installation requires no IT expertise or pre-installation configuration.
- 100% visibility and control: Deploy, monitor, and manage all devices through the same dashboard. Remote console access makes it possible to troubleshoot devices from any web browser.
- Freedom: any application, any cloud: Gain the flexibility to use the tools that the job requires. Move legacy applications to modern hardware, run greenfield applications, or use any cloud
- Superior security designed for the edge: Zero-trust model ensures device integrity in remote environments where potentially hardware, software, and individuals are unable to be verified. Comprehensive security capabilities provide the same level of control and scrutiny expected in the datacenter.
- Future-proof: Flexible and scalable solution with an open architecture makes it possible to easily add functionality, devices, and control to the network.
Zededa Edge Virtualization Software
