Fiber Optic Cable for a Wind Farm? What cable to use?

Recently we've been been moving fiber optic cables into the green energy market and in a previous post we got into it regarding Solar Power Towers . The long term view from the US department of Energy is a commitment to renewable energy, so not only will you see the expansion of these solar power towers but also wind farms.

Are wind farms a new thing? No, the San Gorgonio Pass Wind Farm development began in the early 80's. You figured a standardized fiber optic cable type by now would have been established but it doesn't appear that way. I looked into Corning, AFL and General Cable and I don't see any type of fiber optic cable designed for this specific application.

So what fiber cable is going to be a good fit for your wind farm application? I'm going to put money down on a tight buffered indoor/outdoor cable.



Why not! The majority of the cable is not exposed externally, cable runs from the top in the pole to the base then runs underground with other cables. The most commonly installed cable for cell tower applications is the indoor/outdoor tight buffered construction. Because it runs vertically you don't want a loose tube and since it has no aluminum, copper or any metal your don't have to worry about interference from the electrical cables from the wind farm.

The data rates look to be 10/100 so a 62.5 multimode cable will cover you up to around 2 kilometers, anything over that singlemode get's involved. I don't think the fiber cable should be a complicated part of this type of installation. Fiber cable from a cell tower, data center, home, wind farm all does the same thing by getting a signal from point A to B.

I'm going to work on getting my foot in the door at the San Gorgonio Pass Wind Farm since they're right down the street from me, I could be wrong and maybe it's a completely different cable. I'll work on verifying the cable that's being installed and if you work at a wind farm please comment! It'll be much appreciated.

"By Mercy Salinas"

Fiber optic cable assemblies for Stadium and Arenas

The standard of HD-SDI, 3G HD-SDI and so on has put more stress on broadcasting cables than ever and certain locations of these arenas are removing their coaxial cable system and replacing it with fiber optic cable to meet the high bandwidth demands and distance demands that these signals have to travel.

With so many different types of fiber cables what cable construction might best suit a particular location? Our permanent install snake is commonly used where a permanent fiber cable is needed.

These cables are assembled at your request so a singlemode or multimode, length, connector type, channel count is never a problem for your installations location.

If you have a different cable construction type your looking for we also have broadcast deployable, interlocking armored and other cables that can suit your cable location.

If you have any questions you may contact Mercy Salinas at 888-797-3697 extension 232.

Is Football here yet!

Thanks! 

"By Mercy Salinas"

Direct burial cable for security camera system wiring installation

For most camera wiring installations the pathway of your signal cable is indoors and a small part of that cable run may be exposed outdoors. That's why most cctv camera cables have a general purpose with a sunlight resistant rating to them. But what if you need to extend that cable to a pole far away and you need to bury the cable run?

You'll need a direct burial cable. Let's check out one of our most popular cables for this type of application.



It's important to install a quality cable for a few reasons.

The jacket construction will last for a very long time, the lifetime of a quality cable should last the lifetime of a few security cameras at the location.

Quality copper and a true copper center conductor will allow for a signal to travel a long distance. Since your looking for a direct burial cable your probably doing long cable runs. Low end cables are passing off copper clad aluminum as a bare copper conductor, it's very hard to see but you might find out the hard way. And you wonder why it was so cheap, next thing you know you have a poor signal and the camera image won't come up.

Just a quick tip, if your installing IR cameras at a long distance you probably should install a 24V camera and power supply. You don't want those IR's to turn on in the evening and lose your image signal.

"By Mercy Salinas"  

Fiber optic cable for the extreamly large solar power tower

We recently sold some fiber optic cable for something that I just heard about for the first time in my life, a solar power tower. Solar power seems to be a hot topic so I figured I'd look into how these towers work.

This tower project was in Tonopah Nevada and is know as the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, it's designed to power up to 75,000 homes during peak electricity periods supplying 500,000 megawatt hours annually of clean, renewable electricity. A loan for $737 million from the Department of Energy was approved and private capital was raised for the company handling the project, Solar Reserve. Let's see what they have to say about the construction of their project.



So it was an amazing amount of work to build and cost a ton of money but how does it work? Let's see what the U.S. Department of Energy has to say.



This is cool stuff but where does the fiber come in? There are multiple buildings and this place is huge, it covers 1,600 acres so fiber optic cable could be anywhere. The fiber sold for this project was a singlemode 12 strand armored cable that ran from the warehouse to the communications building. Here's a better look at this fiber from our YouTube channel.



Shipping this fiber was interesting when it came to the address, I was told to just put 10 miles north of hwy 95 they can't miss it! Here's the view from an airplane above, you can't miss it from anywhere.

  

It's cool seeing solar continue to grow, I am a little bummed out that the fiber purchased from me was not involved in the cool part of this project. I have been looking into fiber optic cable for solar panels and wind turbine applications, looks like fiber is more involved in those types of solar applications.

Update 5/28/2013

I just got back from an excellent adventure in Las Vegas with the wife and something caught my eye in the middle of the desert, just south of Whiskey Pete's in Primm Nevada.

A large solar power project! This project is called the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System and is currently the largest solar plant under construction in the world!

Here's some construction footage from Bright Source.



What are we doing in the middle of the desert?

Apparently building solar power plants everywhere.

"By Mercy Salinas"

Difference between managed and unmanaged fiber optic media converter

If you finally figured out what fiber cable type you need for you application and your ready for media converters you might of pumped your brakes when you noticed the same converter being offered as "managed" or "unmanaged" and now your asking yourself, what's the difference?

A unmanaged media converter allows for simple communication with one another but does not provide monitoring, fault detection and setting up network configurations. The unmanaged option is a great choice for newbies and if you want a plug and play fiber network cable installation.



Managed media converters are more costly but do offer additional network monitoring, fault detection, remote configuration and more. After reviewing the managed Signamax media converters we stock, one thing I noticed was it mentions SNMP management. There is no mention of SNMP for our unmanaged fiber optic media converters. What the heck is SNMP?

SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) is a standard for managing devices on IP networks. In common SNMP installations one or more administrative computers have the job of monitoring and managing a group of devices on a network. A software component called an agent will report information via SNMP to the manager.

A SNMP managed network consist of 3 key components.

* Managed device (Media Converter)
* Agent, software that runs on managed devices
* Network management systems (NSM) software that runs on the manager (Administrative computer)

So get the unmanaged if your a noob, get the mananged if your network has certain management demands.

"By Mercy Salinas"