Network modeling and simulation of wind power farm with switched Gigabit Ethernet

Wind power farm monitoring has been received a great attention in both academia and industry with increasing demand for better and reliable communications network. This paper develops a communication network simulator for wind power farm based on switched Gigabit Ethernet. The proposed network model offers remote monitoring for five different sub-networks inside wind turbine (WT) tower: analogue measurement, status information, protection and control devices, video surveillance and internet connection. Architectures and measurement requirements for different sub-networks are explained and discussed. To evaluate the performance of wind power farm network, a small scale wind farm with switched Gigabit Ethernet is modeled and simulated by OPNET modeler. Simulation results show that the proposed network model satisfies with the requirements of power system.