Using IP Video to Protect Hydroelectric Power Plants

Sept. 22, 2006
Remote video distribution and management to be used for Austria's top power company

IP video technology is being used to protect a series of hydroelectric power plants along Austria's Danube River, and UK company IndigoVision has its products in the mix.

The power-generating facilities are operated by the Verbund Group, the largest power generation company in Austria. Verbund's operations are primarily focused on hydroelectric.

The use of IndigoVision's technology signals a greater change in how Verbund is protecting its facilities. While the company previously used an analog system that was monitored locally at a manned control room for the facilities, the company is now switching over to a remote monitoring scenario. The new systems at Verbund's plants will push the video over IP infrastructure to a central command center at the company's Vienna Freudenau plant, which stays connected to other plans that are between 18 and 186 miles away. The connections is based around a 2Mbit WAN.

The system is currently used on three of the nine hydroelectric plants along the Danube. The system was designed by C&C Salzgeber. Within the next six years, Verbund intends to move all its 88 hydro plants and some 40 transformer stations from local analog video to the remote IP video infrastructure that IndigoVision has provided the company.

But Verbund isn't getting rid of its analog system. The company is taking the existing cameras and connecting them to IndigoVisions transmitter/receiver modules which convert the video to digital. The video is handled at the command center by IndigoVision's Control Center software, an enterprise video and alarm management software.