Protecting Solar power plants against intrusion

Over the last decade, there has been a significant increase in the number of solar farms being built across Europe in the attempt to decrease the dependency on fossil fuel and create renewable energy sources. Government schemes have helped fund solar energy and thousands of large sites have been built in just a few years, with the most recent examples over 150 hectares wide.

Located in rural areas and unmanned, solar power plants include expensive equipment that could be targeted by criminals: ranging from the photovoltaic panels, to the inverters and transformers. Our OPTEX teams have been involved in hundreds of projects across the continent to help secure the sites against unauthorised access.

Fence protection

The majority of solar power plants that OPTEX is helping to protect are surrounded by a fence, which provides a great first layer of security. However, intruders could still damage the fence to access the site. Our fibre optic sensors have been deployed to detect any attempt to cut the fence, or climb over the fence.

Open sites

To minimise the visual impact of solar plants, some authorities will request the site owners to avoid using security fences, and instead use hedges or vegetation planting. Such open sites are more likely to have wildlife roaming around which makes their protection more challenging. In such cases, virtual perimeter detection can be deployed using LiDAR technology and the object size can be determined to ignore small to medium size wildlife. Our REDSCAN sensors have been deployed in many sites, creating virtual walls, and the range of the new REDSCAN Pro series covers 100m which provides great benefits for larger sites. The combination of sensing technology with video cameras will provide the best solution to blend within the environment while protecting valuable equipment.

If you would like more information on our fibre optic or LiDAR technologies, contact us.