Partnership between Centrica and Bedroq enables faster, more reliable roll-outs for security, power, and communications to remote energy sites across the UK and Europe.
Centrica is going through a period of expansion, with renewable energy production and storage sites being acquired and added to their network of distributed locations at a rapid pace. The company had 11.6GW of renewable energy under management at the end of 2022, and this number is only increasing due to extensive investment into renewable generation and security of supply.
Bedroq partnered with Centrica to support two core aspects of their site infrastructure – Power & communications, and physical security. Managing these requirements as an ongoing service means that Centrica improve efficiency, reduce downtime, and ensure preparedness for future site expansions as they grow their network throughout the UK and Europe.
The challenge of monitoring and maintaining remote sites
With the transition from traditional to renewable energy, there has also been a reduction in the number of staff needed to maintain sites. Coal and gas sites would commonly have up to 400 staff working there on a daily basis, whereas solar farms and battery storage sites are regularly unmanned.
Renewable energy sites are also often located in isolated areas, presenting difficulties for maintenance and security. Keeping the assets up and running is critical for maintaining a constant supply of power to the grid – if power drops out at one site there can be a cascade effect across all the sites within that area – essentially, things can go very wrong very fast.
Each site has its own Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) in place to provide automated backup to core systems in the event of an outage. There is a limited amount of time that a site can run on UPS, and with no one physically there to monitor the system, this was creating problems. Jon MacKinnon, Network & Infrastructure Delivery Manager at Centrica, said:
‘Previously, we would have sites suddenly going offline because they had been on UPS for 12 hours, and we had no idea that the switch had happened. All the right technology is there, but because it’s not being monitored or managed we weren’t getting any notification about what was going on.’
This combination of factors led Bedroq to design a service that is both highly resilient, and also prioritises the ability to remotely manage and monitor the sites. There are some aspects of the power supply that can be worked on remotely from a centralised control room, restarting the UPS for example. In scenarios that require an engineer to attend in person, they will be given as much diagnostic information as possible prior to arriving at the site, meaning a reduction in the number of visits and increasing the engineer’s ability to fix the problem straight away.
‘The Bedroq solution is highly resilient. Together we’re doing everything we can to stop the site failing, and if something does fail, it’s not an emergency to go and fix, we can use the information we have to schedule the right engineer to attend. It’s no longer a panic or a rush to find out what’s going on.’
– Jon MacKinnon, Network & Infrastructure Delivery Manager.
Having a managed service in place for the power & communications package means that Centrica can extend the service whenever they add a new site to their portfolio, easing the transition through predictable and reliable outcomes. With many more site acquisitions on the horizon, this will continue to save Centrica time and budget over the long term.
Increasing site safety and security for solar farms and battery storage sites
Engineers visiting sites for planned maintenance or to solve a problem are often working alone. Centrica have a process in place to reduce risk and protect their staff in these scenarios. Upon arrival the engineer must check in at the site entrance using a video intercom, which links back to the Group Operations Centre in Windsor. This allows the security team to verify the correct person is attending the site and they can then grant them access using remotely managed access controls. The control room team can then monitor the engineer via cameras during the visit, ensuring their safety, and the engineer must repeat the process with the video intercom to leave the site.
‘It’s a complete process for making sure that only people allowed to access the site, or a particular area within it, are qualified and authorised to do so.’ – Jon MacKinnon, Network & Infrastructure Delivery Manager.
Bedroq supplies and manages Centrica’s Video Management System (VMS) which provides full site CCTV coverage at each of their UK sites. Security teams at Centrica’s GOC and ECC can view live footage, retrieve recordings, and operate cameras remotely, including zoom and tracking functions. The VMS is integrated with other systems such as intercoms, alarms, access control, and lighting, allowing remote management from a single interface. Bedroq provides 24/7 monitoring of the VMS, along with remote support, annual preventative maintenance, and system updates. The system is backed by a 100% uptime service level agreement and hosted in Bedroq’s PASF data centres, helping ensure continuous visibility and fast response to incidents while reducing pressure on Centrica’s internal resources.
Recently there has been a rise in thefts of solar panels, with organised gangs selling onto a lucrative black market. For these reasons it’s important that CCTV cameras are installed in the right locations, providing reliable video feeds back to the central control room. By working in partnership with the internal security teams at Centrica, Bedroq have been able to design an adaptive solution that can be quickly rolled out to suit individual site requirements.
‘It takes a lot of planning to work out what each site needs, but the security teams are relying more and more on Bedroq to take those requirements and deliver them, which makes the process much quicker’ – Jon MacKinnon, Network & Infrastructure Delivery Manager.
Building on a strong partnership
Centrica partner with Bedroq to secure, monitor and maintain core elements of their site infrastructure. This partnership has grown through the delivery of reliable solutions that can be scaled up effectively as Centrica hits its growth targets. Getting the baseline design right has been key to continued success, as Jon MacKinnon, Network & Infrastructure Delivery Manager, said:
‘Together we have designed something that we can grow and keep adding to. We may be looking at another 50 sites, or another 100 sites, whatever happens we can just keep scaling up the solution in a cumulative way. This could be anywhere in the UK, or literally anywhere in the world, because of the way this solution works, we can implement it anywhere and get the same results.’
