Solar Power Monitoring Systems
When it comes to troubleshooting solar power generating systems, it often requires a team of individuals employed by a company to keep everything running smoothly. The Flash Technologies division of SPX Corp. launched its ArgusON brand of Solar Power Management Solution in 2009 to address remote management issues in solar plants.
“ArgusON is a remote asset management system. We don’t just provide a monitoring solution. That was the gap we saw in the solar industry,” said David Wise, director of business development for ArgusON.
While many companies employ in-house troubleshooting, ArgusON’s system is able to troubleshoot, isolate the issue and notify the company about a resolution when it is identified. Instead of making multiple trips to fix the problem, the ArgusON team isolates the problem from their office and enables the integrator to make a single service call.
The ArgusON Solar Power Management solution offers system performance data collection and reporting, predictive maintenance, a web portal, a trouble ticket and alarm management system, a site information and inventory system, as well as customer support.
The ArgusON system is designed around a cellular virtual private network (VPN) platform. Performance and alarm data from the solar power plant is transmitted to ArgusON via a cellular virtual private network. Currently, ArgusON has over 7,000 cellular VPNs in the U.S. in a number of industries. Because the ArgusON system has preconfigured virtual networks in place, a local Ethernet connection does not have to be breached. Wise described it as a “two-way communication path for monitoring and control.” This cellular system functions at a lower bandwidth than those used to access the Internet on a cellular phone. In addition, the system operates on fixed wireless since the units are stationary. Therefore, Wise said the cellular signal does not have any interference issues that local wireless or other networks might have.
ArgusON’s system boasts inherent security through the VPN, which means the system will only communicate back to ArgusON’s data center. If other devices try to communicate with the ArgusON system, the system simply will not respond.
While all of the ArgusON and SPX markets continue to grow, Wise said, “Solar is our fastest growing market in the remote asset management space.”