On a distributed site, remote monitoring usually fails on connectivity rather than on sensors. Running fibre or ethernet to every distribution and pump station is expensive, slow, and gets disproportionately worse the further out the asset sits. A monitoring unit with built-in 4G removes that constraint: the board joins the network without fixed cabling. Terrafame deployed exactly this across its Sotkamo mine in March 2024, on a site covering 62 km².
STAT
Terrafame’s Sotkamo mine site covers 62 km². The Spine system was installed on the pump buildings serving the site’s water management, which run semi-permanently installed submersible pumps. Until then, monitoring of those locations had been carried out manually by field operators, described by Terrafame as laborious and time-consuming. Source: TSR-Elsite, Terrafame deployed the Spine system at its Sotkamo mine
Key takeaways
| Topic | In brief |
|---|---|
| The real constraint | Connectivity, not instrumentation. Fibre to every remote board rarely pays back. |
| What changes | Built-in 4G means the board connects with no fixed cabling and no trenching. |
| Cost shape | Fixed cabling scales with distance. Cellular does not, so remote assets stop being the expensive ones. |
| Transferable | Mines and construction sites share the pattern: temporary or semi-permanent distribution that moves. |
Why is connectivity the bottleneck, not the sensor?
Monitoring one distribution board is a solved problem. The difficulty is scale. Once you have dozens of assets spread across several square kilometres, every fixed connection becomes its own trenching, cabling and documentation job.
The cost does not spread evenly. Near assets are cheap to connect and far assets are disproportionately expensive, and the far ones are usually the same assets where a physical inspection visit takes longest. The predictable outcome is that near assets get monitored and far assets get walked.
Terrafame’s electrical automation development engineer, Tero Pulkkinen, set out the background to the choice. As the case describes it, a device operating over 4G makes it possible to monitor electrical and pump stations without fixed fibre optic or ethernet connections, and ease of installation was what made the units attractive across a mine site of that size.
What does manual inspection actually cost?
The cost of manual monitoring does not appear on an electricity bill. It appears in labour hours and in latency.
Labour is the visible half. Terrafame’s own account is that monitoring had been performed manually by field operators and that this was laborious and time-consuming. That is the standard condition on large distributed sites, not an unusual one.
Latency is the expensive half. If a pump station stops between rounds, the fault is discovered on the next visit. In water management that means the problem has had time to grow before anyone knows it exists. The same logic applies to a temporary construction supply: a board that drifts out of tolerance on Friday evening is a Monday morning problem if nobody is watching the trend.
What does built-in cellular change in practice?
Three things change once a board carries its own connection.
Observation interval. The blind window between inspection rounds disappears. State is known continuously rather than once per shift.
Installation threshold. With no cabling required, extending monitoring to a new location is a device installation rather than an infrastructure project. That changes which assets are worth monitoring at all, which is a strategic difference rather than a technical one. The published range is wide enough for that to matter: the fixed-feed unit is specified for boards from 16 A to 1250 A, and a Plug and Play 16 A variant connects a board to the same cloud service without rewiring it. A 16 A work-point board and a 1250 A main board reach one view rather than two.
Redeployability. On a temporary or changing site the unit moves to wherever it is needed. Fixed cabling ties monitoring to a location whose need may end before the project does.
| Factor | Fixed connection | Built-in cellular |
|---|---|---|
| Installation | Trenching and cabling to the asset | Device fitted at the board |
| Extending to a new asset | A new cabling project | A new device |
| Remote assets | Cost rises with distance | Cost independent of distance |
| Redeployable | Tied to the location | Moves with the need |
Why does climate data belong next to electrical data?
On a pump building, electrical data alone does not describe the situation. In Terrafame’s deployment, an optional Ruuvi tag enables temperature and humidity monitoring for the pump station through the same system.
Terrafame’s pump buildings are insulated and heated, so the risk there is a heating failure rather than everyday cold. Freezing, condensation and accumulating moisture are characteristic failure modes for pump and distribution housings, and a temperature and humidity reading shows them developing before they show up as an electrical fault. When electrical and environmental data sit in one view, the cause of an anomaly is faster to identify than when they sit in two systems, or in one system and one logbook.
Once monitoring no longer needs a cable, the question stops being how far the connection reaches. It becomes which assets are worth watching.TSR-Elsite
Does a mine deployment transfer to a construction site?
Technically the two are closer than they appear. In both cases distribution is temporary or semi-permanent, assets relocate as the work progresses, and building fixed telecoms infrastructure is rarely justified for an installation that will be dismantled.
On a construction site the same three questions recur. Which board is approaching its capacity limit. Where is phase balance failing. What happened in the minutes before a protective device tripped. Real-time monitoring answers those the same way regardless of whether the site is a mine or a building project.
The difference is duration. On a mine the asset is more permanent; on a construction site the monitoring is removed when the project ends. Redeployability therefore matters more, not less, on the construction side.
The equipment span is the same on both sides. A modular site main board of 630 A with 12 module positions and a 16 A plug-in unit sit in the same monitored family, so a site does not need one system for its main board and another for its work points.
One honest limit worth stating
Board-level monitoring sits on the supply side. On UK sites in particular, portable tools run on 110V centre-tapped-to-earth supply downstream of a transformer, and monitoring at the board does not see what happens on the CTE side. Faults at the tool remain the domain of the manual test routine and the competent person’s inspection.
Any vendor claiming their platform sees CTE tool circuits directly should be asked to demonstrate it on a live tool. Stating the boundary is part of sizing a system honestly, and it is a better basis for a specification than a claim that has to be walked back later.
Summary
Terrafame deployed the Spine system across its 62 km² Sotkamo mine site in March 2024 to monitor water-management pump stations. The decisive factor was built-in 4G, which removed the need for fixed fibre and ethernet connections and replaced a laborious manual inspection round with continuous remote monitoring. The same logic applies to temporary construction distribution, where supply is provisional and assets move. To discuss monitoring on a distributed or temporary site, see worksite power supply or get in touch: sales@tsr-elsite.fi or +358 9 4555 588.
Frequently asked questions
Does remote power monitoring require a fixed network connection?
No. A unit with built-in 4G connects at the distribution or pump board without fibre or ethernet. That was the deciding factor at Terrafame’s Sotkamo mine. Exception: locations with no usable mobile coverage need the connectivity method checked separately.
What does remote monitoring give you that an inspection round does not?
It removes the blind window between rounds. With manual monitoring a fault is found on the next visit, by which point it has had time to grow.
Can the same system monitor temperature and humidity?
Yes. In Terrafame’s deployment an optional Ruuvi tag brings pump-station temperature and humidity into the same view as the electrical data. This helps identify the cause of an anomaly, because moisture and freezing problems do not show in current measurement until a fault has already occurred.
Does monitoring designed for a mine suit a construction site?
Yes. Both have temporary or semi-permanent distribution and assets that relocate, so fixed telecoms infrastructure is rarely justified. Redeployability matters more on construction, because the monitoring is removed when the project ends.
How does cellular monitoring compare on cost to a fixed connection?
Pricing is a device purchase plus a licence, and in October 2026 no public list price was published: TSR quotes per site. The structural difference is what matters: fixed cabling cost rises with distance while cellular cost does not, so the most remote assets stop being the most expensive to connect.
Is the data still available after the site closes?
Yes. On the Spine platform data is stored throughout the project lifecycle and remains accessible after the site is completed, so a retrospective fault review is a report export rather than a reconstruction from memory.
Sources
- TSR-Elsite, Terrafame deployed the Spine system at its Sotkamo mine
- Spine real-time remote monitoring system (product page)
- HSE, HSG141 Electrical safety on construction sites (second edition, 2023)
- Spine for fixed-feed boards, 16A to 1250A (product specification)
- Temporary power distribution boards, technical specification (TSR-Elsite)