Gantner contracted for largest Solar Power Plant in the Netherlands

Gantner Instruments Environment Solutions is supplying a complete monitoring and control solution to the largest Solar Power Plant in the Netherlands. Leading UK-headquartered developer Solarcentury has contracted Gantner to equip the 110 MW Vlagtwedde project owned by a fund run by the specialist renewable energy fund manager Impax Asset Management.

The PV plant on an area of 100 hectares will be controlled by 54 individual Gantner Q.reader power plant controllers “PPC”. A central 19” data logger and PPC rack will control the two grid connection points. The PPC receives control commands from the Automatic Network Management ANM by IEC 60870 communication protocol. With the integrated touch screen of the local SCADA/HMI the power plant can be operated on site. The control and monitoring functions are provided with a sample rate of 1Hz. One-minute measurement values will be sent to the Gantner.webportal for daily O&M and for comprehensive power plant analytics with latest big data technologies. The total number of acquired and calculated channels adds up to about 500 million per day and a lifetime data volume of 12 TB.

Thanks to the restful API which comes with Gantner.webportal it is easy to integrate plant data into company-wide data warehouses for unified storage and further applications. To effectively support onsite O&M, Gantner will setup an industrial Wi-Fi mesh network for smooth working processes for the service technicians. Gantner is also supplying six weather stations.