Solar farms and distributed energy assets require stable, continuous connectivity for inverter monitoring, production data collection, and remote access across unattended sites. Connected IoT Limited provides industrial-grade 4G and 5G connectivity designed for dependable operation in remote and rural locations where fixed-line infrastructure is unavailable or cost-prohibitive.
Energy monitoring systems depend on real-time data visibility, alarm forwarding, and secure remote diagnostics. Long operational lifespans and minimal site access require robust cellular connectivity with redundancy and automatic recovery.
Energy monitoring systems must be secured and accessible for reliable operations. Typical capabilities include:
Inverters, combiner boxes, and weather stations connect to a local gateway or data aggregator via Ethernet or serial interfaces. The gateway collects data locally, buffers readings during connectivity loss, and uplinks to an industrial cellular router with external antennas. The router enforces VLANs, QoS and firewall policies to separate production telemetry and management traffic, and terminates persistent TLS/IPsec VPN tunnels to a central control centre or energy management platform.
Production data is forwarded from the gateway through the router to central monitoring systems over the VPN. Alarms and fault events are prioritised for immediate notification. Remote diagnostics and configuration access is handled on a separate secure plane using certificate-based authentication.
Revenue-critical production data must be collected reliably without loss or duplication. During brief outages, gateways buffer readings locally and synchronise with the central system once connectivity returns. Session persistence and rapid re-authentication prevent dropped readings during transient network events. Alarm escalation ensures critical faults receive immediate attention. Recovery processes include safeguards against duplicate records and consistent timestamping for billing and performance audits.
Fixed-line connectivity is often unavailable or cost-prohibitive at solar sites, particularly in rural and remote areas where fibre or copper infrastructure is sparse or absent. Cellular enables rapid deployment independent of site location, operator diversity with dual-SIM or multi-operator eSIMs, and scalable connectivity across distributed generation networks. While fixed lines can offer higher sustained bandwidth in ideal conditions, modern 4G and 5G networks provide sufficient performance for energy monitoring and control systems when designed with appropriate resilience, local buffering, and fault recovery.
For related deployment guidance, see our smart metering and utilities, DeviceHub management and VPN and antenna optimisation pages.
If you operate systems that require stable, secure connectivity, we can help specify the correct industrial router, antenna setup and connectivity approach for your deployment.