FEATURE SPONSOR
OFFSHORE COMMUNICATIONS MOBILE COMMUNICATION COVERAGE
The received wisdom is that Western Europe has ubiquitous mobile coverage. But many of us know from personal experience that you don’t need to go far beyond a city centre to discover that your mobile signal has become unstable, or has completely disappeared. And we know coastal regions fare worse with mobile signals dropping off only a few kilometres offshore. To stay connected, relying on the reach of GSM and/or radio simply isn’t good enough.
RELIABLE SATELLITE TECHNOLOGY
The past decade has seen remarkable advances in the renewable energy sector. According to the UK’s Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, the UK is number one in the world for offshore wind power generation in terms of installed capacity, and has the biggest pipeline up to 2020. But a significant part of this growth comes from new installations located in high risk, remote, even environmentally hostile locations, as well as offshore.
RISKS
The risks in the wind energy sector are well known and health and safety regulations are encouraging providers to do more to safeguard personnel.
Any kind of major construction project inevitably comes with hazards. Risk is enhanced by the fact that installations in remote regions tend to be difficult to access and prone to extreme weather conditions. Furthermore, fire is a serious danger in the wind energy environment. Crews need to know they can summon emergency help any time and from any location.
RETAINING SKILLED AND EXPERT STAFF
All this is taking place against a backdrop of an increasing appreciation of the importance of retaining skilled and expert staff, both to promote operational efficiency and safety, as well as to gain competitive advantage. With the welfare of offshore staff now a higher priority than ever, providing employees with reliable communications tools to help them stay in touch with headquarters and emergency services is now widely recognised as good practice. However making the right decision about communications technology is critical.
Fortunately affordable, reliable satellite technology meets this need. More and more wind energy sector players recognise Globalstar’s SPOT GPS messenger as the ideal tracking and safety device for remote workers. Wind energy provider SSE Renewables, for example, chose SPOT in 2014 to help protect staff carrying out important activities at wind power installations, onshore and offshore, in the UK and Ireland and uptake continues apace.
INSTANT TRANSMISSION
System users do not just benefit from a reliable satellite-based device to keep in touch with colleagues but they can instantly contact help in times of crisis. With a single press of SPOT’s SOS button, the user’s location is instantly transmitted to the worldwide GEOS emergency response centre, or directly to first responders, regardless of alternative network coverage.
If a wind energy worker needs to make
or receive a phone call, or business- critical data transmission, to customers or colleagues, the GSP-1700 satellite phone delivers the best voice quality in the satcom space, as well as the fastest data throughput rates of any device in its class. Its great news that today, leading-edge,
yet affordable technology is available to help safeguard those carrying out important roles in the fast-growing wind energy sector.
Gavan Murphy Director of Marketing Globalstar
www.windenergynetwork.co.uk
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