Zenitel to offer critical communication infrastructure for North Sea offshore wind farm

Wood has awarded Zenitel a contract to facilitate communication through TETRA, UHF and Marine VHF to the Hywind Tampen offshore wind farm.

Thomas Aas, Marketing Lead for Maritime & Energy for Zenitel, reports that Equinor has awarded Wood the EPCI (Engineering, Procurement, Construction, and Installation) contract to deliver the topside modification of the platforms and integration with the Hywind Tampen wind farm, as well as modifications to the onshore control center in Bergen. As part of this large contract, Wood has selected Zenitel to deliver critical communications infrastructure, along with portable and fixed radio units.

Hywind Tampen is an 88 MW floating wind power project that is intended to provide electricity for the Snorre and Gullfaks offshore field operations in the Norwegian North Sea. When complete, it will be the world's first floating wind farm to power offshore oil and gas platforms.

Communication systems
The requirement specification for the Hywind Tampen project called for the delivery of:

• TETRA UHF
• VHF/FM Maritime
• VHF/AM Aeronautical Radio communication
• Optical distribution network
• Integration system for third-party equipment

On each of the 11 floating wind turbines (FWT), Zenitel will also deliver two main RITTAL racks, consisting of one Telecom Equipment Cabinet and one Technical & Office Data Network Cabinet, as well as 5 smaller cabinets with various equipment such as Over Voltage Protection, Optical Distribution and more.

Each FWT will also be equipped with handheld radios for TETRA UHF, VHF/FM Maritime radios and VHF/AM Aeronautical radios, with relevant accessories for safe and secure communication from the FWT to the platforms, operation center, supply vessels and helicopters.

'Reliable emergency and operational communications during service, maintenance, and installation on the FWT is essential, and Zenitel is proud to be a preferred supplier of these critical communication systems for the Hywind Tampen project. siad: Tor Kristian Lystad - VP Sales & General Manager Energy, Zenitel.

Operational efficiency and safety of crew
Establishing reliable communication lines is important for both operational efficiency and the safety of crew on offshore wind farms. It is important for the installation and service personnel to have the ability to communicate between themselves and coordination centers at shore or offshore. Another important fact, especially when using TETRA equipment is the ability to locate workers when they are in the field.

There are clear benefits from using TETRA (Terrestrial Trunked Radio) for offshore wind farms:

• It is a secure network allowing one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many, providing an extremely flexible solution.
• It transmits on a lower frequency than a traditional VHF, giving it a much broader coverage.
• Adding base stations to each FWT and connecting them to fiberoptic solutions will reduce almost all risk of downtime or coverage.