On 17/06/16 12:33, Chris Hogg wrote:
On Fri, 17 Jun 2016 11:38:51 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

Solar power makes more sense nowadays, even with redundancy built in to
allow for degradation due to dust build up.


Solar power makes no sense at all. Its completely unsustainable

Many buoys these days are fitted with solar panels to power the
electronics, especially the scientific buoys used to record maritime
conditions such as wind speed, wave heights and temperatures. Even
lighthouses have them. What does surprise me is that they survive the
conditions, and don't get short-circuited by the salt water or simply
crudded up by salt deposits.


Yep. There its not a question of generating large amounts of power, so
batteries and solar is cheaper than cables to shore. atomic batteries,
or regular visits to replace primary cells - nuclear or not.

Its pretty **** poor in the Arctic circle in winter tho.

However that's not what I meant. I meant that when you need to generate
serious amounts of power, reliably, solar doesn't cut the mustard. The
batteries get too huge and too expensive, and the whole thing gets to be
about the battery, and you might as well have something else instead.



Two scientific buoys in the Channel off Plymouth:
http://tinyurl.com/guae5m2 http://tinyurl.com/gse33le

and the Bishop Rock lighthouse west of the Isles of Scilly
http://tinyurl.com/hhnhyrt (solar panels up around the lantern below
the helipad), Nab Tower off Southampton http://tinyurl.com/h9jfgrs and
Royal Sovereign, off Eastbourne http://tinyurl.com/gtlmzru

"In 1973, the oil lamp was changed to a hyper radial rotating 400W
light, when *electricity was brought to Bishop Rock*. The lamp emits two
white flashes every 15 seconds and has an intensity of 600,000 candela.
It has a range of 45km."

http://www.engineering-timelines.com...Item.asp?id=36

It may have solar panels, but it looks very much as if it has an
undersea cable powering it, since solar panels were not in existence in
1973.

I accept that the other two are currently solar powered, but they are
low pwer, and close enough to shore to be easily serviceable when
anything goes wrong


--
You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a
kind word alone.

Al Capone