News

Offshore wind farms have a key role to play in the UK hitting its Net Zero target in 2050. Its advantage over onshore wind farms and other renewable energy sources is its environment. With the open space of the sea, comes the opportunity to deliver a conveyor belt of projects. 

But with great opportunities comes the potential for great adversity. Operating a project on the open sea is risky business. There's fewer harsher environments out there, and clear, concise communication can be hard to come by. That's why operators have been utilising two-way radio systems to boost worker safety, power productivity, and improve efficiency. 

Awash a backdrop of crippling costs though, the industry must be more prudent in its decision making. That's why, in this blog, we're going to compare the two most common radio systems used on offshore wind farms, Digital Mobile Radio (DMR) and Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA). 

Let's see which one is more cost-effective when it comes to reliable communication.

The transition from analogue

Some operators in the field may already have an aged two-way radio solution in place. Often this will be an analogue system that has deprecated over time. Decision makers can sometimes be reluctant to change, because the perception is that the cost to upgrade from analogue to digital will be expensive. 

And in some respects it can be, particularly when it comes to TETRA. This is due to the fact you can't migrate from an analogue system to TETRA seamlessly. You will essentially need to start from scratch - which brings with it brand new infrastructure and the costs associated with it. 

On the other hand, DMR was designed to make the migration from analogue to digital pain-free. It's easy to map analogue channels to digital ones, and you may only need to upgrade a certain amount of equipment to complete the transition. DMR's ability to transition gives it a clear advantage over other systems.

The need to be cost-effective

One of the biggest challenges wind farm operators face is the overall cost of piecing a project together. And it's not just upfront costs that need to be considered. A wind farm is operational for years, and systems put in place must help boost safety, power productivity, and improve efficiency. 

If you opt for a two-way radio system that brings coverage or infrastructure challenges with it, the likelihood is that it's going to cost you even more time and money than you'd budgeted for. 

TETRA is often chosen for the offshore aspect of a farm, as it's commonly used on oil and gas rigs, so the assumption is that it will work effectively on a wind farm. In the next section of the blog, you'll see why this assumption isn't necessarily the reality. 

In a broad sense, DMR requires less infrastructure to give site-wide coverage, and over the long-term provides operators with a more cost-effective solution.  

Wind turbine penetration

It's one thing getting reliable communication at O&M bases or substations. But if you can't get two-way communication coverage to penetrate a wind turbine then you've got a rather large headache on your hands. 

For transparency, both TETRA and DMR can penetrate a wind turbine for communication coverage, but both solutions must be analysed separately, as they don't go hand-in-hand. Let us explain what we mean by this. 

In any environment, coverage is reliant on physical or virtual obstacles not being in the way. On an offshore wind farm, it may appear that only the sea and the turbines are in the way, so there should be little to no issue. But it's the latter of the two obstacles that causes coverage problems. 

Due to the structure of a wind turbine, radio signal on its own can't penetrate them fully. This causes issues when workers are operating inside the structure, particularly from a safety perspective. Additional infrastructure is required in order to achieve reliable coverage. 

Without going into the finer details, it takes seven TETRA base station sites to achieve the same coverage as two DMR base station sites, so on face value it's more appropriate to use DMR technology for offshore communication. 

Eemits in the wind farm industry    

We specialise in DMR solutions for wind farms by deploying our award-winning TRBOCALL system. We use a full 360 approach and connect everything from substations to marine vessels together - resulting in multi-site and multi-operational two-way communication. 

In fact, we have solutions on over 35 wind farms in the UK, and are in the midst of working on projects in France and have done consultany work in North America. We have an experienced team ready to delivery communication success for new projects all over the country. Simply contact us today to see how our approach will deliver cost-effective, ultra-reliable coverage for your wind farm. 

You can also call us on 0800 328 0100 between 8:30am and 5:15pm Monday to Friday.