Internet Connection for Solar PV in Ochiltree, Ayrshire
Solar power is great, especially on a slightly larger scale spanned across multiple buildings or sheds.
The downside to this of course is that unless each of those buildings has an active internet connection then there’s no way to tell how much power is being generated unless you manually go and check, which is fine unless the solar system is out of reach and requires a set of ladders just to see the display.
Now we’re no strangers to implementing solutions to provide internet connections in everything from houses, offices, and of course farms since our camera systems amongst other things rely on a stable internet connection in order to function correctly.
In the case of this installation we already had an existing network infrastructure in place on a shed a mere stones throw away so the solution was fairly straight forward. Since a cabled approach wasn’t possible it meant going with a point to point wireless link which we often rely on for short distance hops.
Point to point wireless links are great and come in many variations with different frequencies, power options and ranges. In this case we went with a Ubiquiti offering due to the farm already having several of these access points in place.
That’s great but now we have a cable in the new shed that needs some POE in order to function and needs a way to transmit that signal wirelessly to the solar system. A suitable rated enclosure with a POE+ switch installed and we have a connection point, add to that a simple Unifi access point to transmit and receive the WiFi and the job’s done. Simple, straight forward and a solid connection.
