CASE STUDY
Moray West

World-class networking and
seamless, secure data flows for
Scotland’s newest offshore
wind farm.

About Moray West

Developed by Ocean Winds, a 50 / 50 joint venture between ENGIE and EDPR, Moray West is the latest offshore wind farm off the coast of Scotland, utilising sixty wind turbines to deliver power to more than 1.33 million homes and businesses across the country.

Challenge

Ocean Winds required a trusted network partner to design, build, and install the underlying network and passive infrastructure for the new Moray West site’s underlying SCADA and metering systems, working closely with Siemens Energy.

Having already successfully delivered the critical communications infrastructure for the Moray East wind farm, during which a strong working relationship with Ocean Winds had already been established, Vysiion were a natural choice for this project, building on these initial achievements.

The Solution

The project began with the deployment of the required panels on the offshore site. With this in place, they worked closely with Ocean Winds own teams throughout the entire project, while also engaging with Siemens Energy, when necessary, to ensure the design of the underlying network was fit for purpose and could be successfully implemented, with ample room to scale in the future. This also included managing the entire supply chain throughout the project execution, so if the geopolitical landscape impacted the availability of certain elements, alternatives could be sourced, on time and to budget.

Once the site’s networking requirements had been established, highly resilient 300Mbps circuits were deployed, which would serve as the foundation of all external communications, including telephony, along with secure 3rd party access for both the substation and the Operation and Maintenance (O&M) base.

The Solution Cont.

For the next stage, Vysiion worked closely with Siemens Energy to implement a Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) for Moray West, ensuring the dataflows required to optimise the site’s performance and resilience could be maintained at all times, without any additional security risks.

Although not part of the original project specifications, recent regulatory changes in the standards of operational resilience Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) organisations must maintain meant that the DMZ was critically important in terms of ensuring the new site’s longevity. As such Vysiion took on a range of additional management duties to ensure the design of the new DMZ reflected the new compliance obligations, and that its deployment would take place as seamlessly as possible. This included hosting hands-on workshops with Ocean Winds staff, ensuring best practice would be embedded across the entire operation.

With this in place, Ocean Winds were able to integrate additional systems and establish real-time, holistic monitoring of the entire Moray West site’s performance and security - all while maintaining the highest standards of security and full compliance with applicable regulations.

The contact between Vysiion and Ocean Winds continues to evolve, supporting the ongoing operational aspects of the Moray West site, helping identify and act on new opportunities for improvement, and ensuring any potential concerns are swiftly resolved.

Solution Benefits

A successful deployment of sixty turbines, delivering power to homes and businesses across Scotland.
Highly resilient 300Mbps circuits enable seamless, secure external communications.
Full compliance with evolving regulations, with the highest standards of physical and digital security embedded across the operation.
Highly secure flows of data, supporting the intelligent integration of multiple systems, proactive monitoring, and seamless collaboration between teams and vendors.
Close collaboration with a dedicated account team resulted in a successful deployment, with ample room for future development.

^{It did feel like that nirvana we all strive for - a partnership rather than a supplier relationship. Nothing was ever too much trouble for the project team or the technicians. It was the ability to think outside the box when required and understand not just what was going wrong, but what needed to be done to put it right. It was a very organic project.}

^{Sean Gibbons}^{Watford Borough Council.}