[HN Gopher] Satellite outage knocks out thousands of Enercon's w...
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       Satellite outage knocks out thousands of Enercon's wind turbines
        
       Author : mpsq
       Score  : 17 points
       Date   : 2022-02-28 17:23 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
        
       | olliej wrote:
       | I'm kind of confused, the headline says they're out of operation,
       | the article says they're in auto mode.
       | 
       | My understanding (prior to this article) was that turbines
       | normally ran autonomously anyway, so is this "they're generating
       | power in automatic mode", or they've gone to some kind of
       | automatic safe-mode? (I do know that just turning it off/applying
       | brakes is insufficient for a general "safe" mode, but that's at
       | "I saw it on tv once" level not any technical knowledge)
        
       | Nextgrid wrote:
       | I wonder why they use satellite. Wind turbines are high up so it
       | seems like a very good candidate for point-to-point line-of-sight
       | microwave links.
        
         | olliej wrote:
         | They're often placed on the sides of hills so presumably that's
         | a problem. UHF/VHF (I can never recall which sorry) is used for
         | the rural radio links in NZ so can probably handle such issues.
         | 
         | I suspect the real answer though is that satellite
         | theoretically everywhere regardless of geography on the
         | installation site, so you only have to build one type of unit
         | rather than multiple variants. That probably makes life easier
         | (cheaper) for everyone.
         | 
         | Obviously that's assuming a country doesn't decide to disrupt
         | entire communication networks in a murder rampage into their
         | neighbouring countries.
        
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       (page generated 2022-02-28 23:02 UTC)