Rampion Offshore Wind Farm Case Study

The Client

The Rampion Offshore Wind Farm is the UK south coast’s first offshore wind farm. When completed, it will generate enough green electricity to power the equivalent of around 350,000 UK homes. This is equal to almost half of the homes in Sussex. The farm is part owned by E.ON Climate and Renewables.

The Issue/Problem

Our involvement in this truly impressive project originally started with us being called in to their construction base which was suffering interment WiFi issues.

There were a number of construction cabins needing reliable Internet access for the base to function properly. Several discounted access points were in place with two microwave connections to the other side of Newhaven harbour. Things needed consolidating and sorting out.

We were also asked to help with the move to their new state-of-the-art building nearby. Plus we needed to design the multiple large-screen setup needed for the Control Room that manages the now fully operational wind farm.
A network with Internet and WiFi was also needed at an additional site at Upper Beeding.

What did we do?
1st Phase
Our first task was to cable together two of the temporary construction buildings creating one network and WiFi system with a decent firewall. The idea was that we would keep the two existing microwave links with independent internet connections and used them as a redundant pair so that the whole site could remain operational should one link fail. We installed a suitable system to cater for the high number of staff that were needed. There was to be a lot of coming and going as is the nature of such a project. All of the equipment would eventually be moved and re-used in the new building when it became operational. We also provided on-site and remote support for the systems.
2nd Phase
The move to the new building was done in three stages to allow for an overlap of staff being in the two buildings. This was done with no interruption or downtime to business operations.
3rd Phase

This was the investigation, design and implementation of a seemingly simple requirement with a rather limited choice of options.

All that was needed was for the Control Room to contain keyboards, mice and large HD screens connected to computer equipment in a different Comms room a fair way away. There was too be no messy cabling and it all needed to run over the building’s structured cabling.

Traditional KVM solutions were not an option and we ended up spec-ing and installing a sophisticated and redundant system that could send HD video (actually capable of near 4k) plus USB signalling for keyboards, mice and other devices over CAT5 cabling.

Upper Beeding Site
This was the investigation, design and implementation of a seemingly simple requirement with a rather limited choice of options.
Results
A construction site move into the new building, a 100% reliable WiFi and Control Room video system, a successful temporary office setup and tear-down and happy prestigious client.

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