Simulation studies of resilient communication network architecture for monitoring and control wind power farms

Real time monitoring and control of wind power farms (WPFs) require a high reliable communication network infrastructure. The WPFs monitoring and control can be guaranteed through the communication network by using redundant resources and quality of service (QoS) for different applications. In this paper, we study and simulate resilient network architecture for monitoring and control WPFs. The communication network architecture consists of three different levels: data generation level, data aggregation level and control center level. Each level is based on its function, physical location, type of communication channel and redundant resources. In accordance to IEC 61400-25 standard, the wind turbine monitoring traffic is classified into critical and non-critical data according to different QoS requirements. Due to lower cost, non-proprietary standard and guaranteed real-time services, the Ethernet technologies are currently used in various industrial applications. Several network failure scenarios based on Ethernet technology are used to simulate the network architecture through OPNET. The performance of the network architecture is evaluated in view of the amount of received data, end-to-end delay and data loss at control center. The simulation results show that the communication network architecture can guarantee the transmission of WPFs critical data.