Satellite outage knocks out thousands of Enercon's wind turbines

I’m kind of confused, the headline says they’re out of operation, the article says they’re in auto mode.<p>My understanding (prior to this article) was that turbines normally ran autonomously anyway, so is this “they’re generating power in automatic mode”, or they’ve gone to some kind of automatic safe-mode? (I do know that just turning it off&#x2F;applying brakes is insufficient for a general “safe” mode, but that’s at “I saw it on tv once” level not any technical knowledge)

I wonder why they use satellite. Wind turbines are high up so it seems like a very good candidate for point-to-point line-of-sight microwave links.

Does Enercon sell turbines bundled with some sort of MRR remote management&#x2F;service plan in place?

It sounds like the satellite access is for manufacturer support (Enercon) but the day to day operation is done by the power companies that own them, via other comms.<p>Beware device phone-home maybe? Guess at least this case sounds like just a DoS not access.