Chapter 12: Power systems, Control and Communications

Title: The reliability analysis of EPON-based offshore wind power farm communication networks with protection schemes

Author(s): Mohamed A. Ahmed, Young-Chon Kim

Address: Department of Computer Engineering, Smart Grid Research Center, Chonbuk National University, Jeonju, Korea | Department of Computer Engineering, Smart Grid Research Center, Chonbuk National University, Jeonju, Korea

Reference: Software, Knowledge, Information Management and Applications (SKIMA 2013) pp. 556 - 561

Abstract/Summary: The wind power farm (WPF) communication network needs a new design to fulfill the growing number of offshore WPFs as well as the amount of data traffic from the condition monitoring systems inside wind turbines (WTs). Ethernet passive optical network (EPON) is one of the promising candidates for future access network. It has attracted great attention to implement high speed optical access network due to its ability to provide large coverage, high capacity and cost effectiveness. This paper analyzes the network reliability performance of the proposed EPON-based communication network with protection schemes for monitoring/controlling offshore WPF. Two kinds of network scenarios are considered: switch-based Ethernet and star-based EPON. To increase the WPF network reliability and prevent the impact of a single point of failure, partial protection (PP) and full protection (FP) are investigated. The reliability performance of network is analyzed and compared in view of resiliency and mean downtime per year (MDT).

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