printer friendly version

Protecting Google-backed SA solar farm

South Africans accustomed to increasingly-severe rolling electricity blackouts no doubt saw a ray of hope in the coming online in October last year of the Jasper Solar Energy Project. The 96 megawatt (MW) photovoltaic power station is located near Kimberley, Northern Cape, counts Google as an investor and is set to power up to 80 000 electricity-starved South African homes.

Philip Smerkovitz, MD of TeleEye South Africa.

Protecting the assets of often unmanned solar farms is where remote CCTV monitoring comes into its own. After being rolled-out in 2012 at two much smaller 33 MW solar farms, also in the Northern Cape, CCTV specialist TeleEye SA’s thermal imaging technology is now being used in surveillance applications at the Jasper installation.

To protect its valuable ground-mounted solar panel assets against unwanted intruders, the Jasper owners called upon TeleEye SA to best advise how the security distributor’s sophisticated video alarm monitoring and detection solutions, as well as its FLIR thermal imaging technology, could help secure the remote solar site.

Together, they came up with a master plan that would provide real-time monitoring. day and night, in order to efficiently deter unwanted intruders and prevent vandalism of a site that has definite national importance in light of South Africa’s current power supply challenges. In particular, SMAC-M multi-stream compression enables the TeleEye solution to ensure optimum performance on recording and live video monitoring simultaneously. The TeleEye sureSIGHT solution is also a scalable and sophisticated video management platform. It can be customised in terms of the number of video monitoring terminals, multi-layer sitemap, video wall configuration, and more.

TeleEye South Africa, a local division of Hong Kong-based company TeleEye, has many years of experience in securing public utilities sites which enables 24/7 standalone and remote operation with real-time monitoring and recording.

Integrated perimeter solution

For the Jasper solar plant, TeleEye provided a complete perimeter surveillance solution consisting of TeleEye optical cameras, FLIR thermal imaging cameras, video analytics, alarm verification and alarm management. The solar plant perimeter has been secured with thermal imaging cameras from FLIR Systems and electric fencing.

Philip Smerkovitz, MD of TeleEye South Africa explains that FLIR thermal cameras deliver very accurate optics and image quality along with robustness, which is an important factor in the harsh temperatures of the sites they monitor. The Jasper installation is located in desert-like conditions where daytime temperatures of 40°C in summer are not uncommon.

FLIR thermal cameras allow monitoring day and night. Without any additional lighting, it is possible to detect intruders approaching the perimeter at night. The thermal camera’s ability to see in bright sunlight conditions was also important because sunlight can obviously be very bright in the Karoo desert. Glare from the sun may blind conventional video cameras, effectively hiding vehicles, people and animals.

Jasper is located in a solar park that also includes the 75 MW Lesedi solar power project, which came online in May 2014. Lead sponsor of the Jasper consortium is SolarReserve, which develops utility-scale solar power projects and advanced solar thermal technology.

Google has a recent history of investing in wind and solar power, and since 2010 has committed to more than US$1 billion in renewable energy projects worldwide. Until 2013 little of this was spent on renewable energy in Africa. A new $12 million investment in the Jasper power project, at a project cost of approximately ZAR2.3 billion ($260 million) signals a change in policy. South Africa has a goal of having 18 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2030.

Share this article:

Further reading: