Tariam connects GDF Suez at Craigengelt Windfarm

Global Satellite Internet ISP Tariam has completed a challenging project providing 2 ISDN lines via satellite into Craigengelt Windfarm, near Stirling in Scotland for French energy giant GDF Suez. The facility will comprise eight turbines generating up to 24MW of electricity, effectively preventing the release of more than 47,000 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every year by traditional fossil fuel power stations.

Tariam’s Special Projects team was approached in November 2009 as traditional broadband options had been abandoned for being too costly and because they couldn’t deliver on time. As well as providing ISDN via their global BGAN platform, Tariam has provided a super fast Ethernet connection using its iconnect satellite broadband platform, based on iDirect.

The project, which was completed at very short notice and to tight deadlines, is the GDF Suez’s first windfarm in the UK.

Tariam Business Development Manager, Neil Waugh, said

“Connecting customers via ISDN over satellite isn’t something we get asked to do every day, but the standard is still widely used for remote control and monitoring in the windfarm sector, and with BGAN it’s straightforward to set up.

“The key drivers in this deployment though were the costs and the speed of installation. There’s a common misconception that satellite broadband is a more expensive option than fixed line broadband or ISDN, but this isn’t the case particularly when you factor in the reliability and robustness of the connections we offer.

“As customers come to us with more and more remote places that they need connecting, satellite internet becomes more and more viable. We’ve heard several instances in the last few weeks where BT was quoting over £100,000 to get a line into a site, and one instance this week where a customer has been quoted £250,000.

“Our solutions deliver without discriminating by geographical location, and the dynamic new technology we deploy means that customers get a better overall solution that ADSL can offer anyway”.

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