With innovative GPS/GSM-based security systems for solar panels and solar parks, viamon has made a name for itself globally for protecting solar parks around the world from theft. PES invited, engineer, founder and managing director Oliver Strecke, to give us his insight into the company’s technology and the expanding market.
PES: Welcome back to PES Solar Oliver. We are interested to hear about the security viamon offers, especially for operators of solar parks. What exactly does that mean?
Oliver Strecke: Around the globe, huge solar parks are continuously being built, some of them many square miles in size. Such high concentrations of modern technology in a single spot naturally attract the attention of criminals. In concrete terms, this means that solar panels and valuable technology are dismantled and stolen on a large scale in these huge and often remote parks.
In many cases, these things go unnoticed for days. We at viamon make sure that theft is prevented or that the thieves don‘t have a chance to enjoy their loot for long.
For this purpose, over the last 10 years we have developed GPS/GSM-based security systems, especially for the protection of solar parks. Our system anticipates all security-relevant scenarios, around possible hardware thefts, in a solar park.
PES: Does this mean that you protect not only the solar panels, but also other components?
OS: That’s exactly what it means. For example, the extensive cabling and inverters in solar parks are increasingly being stolen. The cables are interesting for the thieves because of their copper core, and the inverters can be sold directly to the customers of the stolen solar panels. At the end of the day, they just steal everything that isn’t nailed down.
Therefore, in addition to our first product, a compact and powerful module for solar panels, we have now also developed security technology for cable harnesses and inverters. They all work based on the same principle but are adapted to the hardware they protect.
