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BARGE NAVIGATION LIGHTS
 

One of the four solar arrays installed on the barge.

"Systems were installed within 2 days in late July, the most uncomfortable hot & humid period in the United Arab Emirates."
 

In July 1997 we were approached by Henderson Marine Consultants of Dubai and asked if we could power navigation lights for a pipe laying barge, located in Sharjah, that had just completed a pipeline project in the Arabian Gulf and was to be towed to the Gulf of Mexico for another pipe laying project. The tow was to take 100 days and the barge would be unoccupied during the tow. As the barge was over a certain length the lights had to meet international standarde and those supplied were 40 Watt tungsten filament bulbs. 4 such lights had to be installed.

The main problem was that the barge was due to sail in 3 days so all components had to be from stock. We could supply all components except automatic on at dust off at dawn DC controllers which we had ordered but were not due for several weeks. However we did have DC programmable electronic timers incorporating charge PV controllers, but as the tow would pass through 9 time zones these would have to be reset at least 4 times during the tow.

To reduce power consumption the beakons were retrofitted with Aladin 12 Volt compact fluorescent lights (LINK) that consume only 12 watts and give more light ourput than the 40 watt tungsten filament bulb and have less risk of failure due to their intrinsic longer life and allowed a far smaller solar array and battery to be used. As the lights were separated by up to 50 meters it was decided to use 4 separate systems than to have cables strung the length of the barge.

To power each light an array of 2 Solarex VLX - 53 watt modules were used which were placed horizontally. As the tow basically passed along the tropics, theoretically a single VLX-53 could supply the load but allowing for dust seaspray etc this was risking ti too much. AC DELCO 105 AH "Yoyager" Deep Cycle marine batteries supplied energy storage. Systems were installed within 2 days in late July, the most uncomfortable hot & humid period in the United Arab Emirates.

The barge left on time and as we heard nothing more, we assume the systems must have performed satisfactory.