importance

Guest

Why is the tower that powers BEO important to your trip?

Joined: 23 Mar 2004 Posts: 74 Location: Barrow, AK

Well, Libby, the power tower is important in one key way, it makes less work for us!
The tower has solar panels and a wind turbine generator that charge up four 6V batteries. These batteries provide the electricity that the eddy covariance tower needs to run its data loggers and computer.
All summer the power tower was not working, in that its batteries were not charging up, which meant that we needed to run a gasoline generator (a little Honda generator, just like you could buy at WalMart Smile

) to a charger unit that then would recharge two 12V car batteries (yes, just like the ones in your mom's car).
If we didn't go out every day to refuel the generator and start it again, then the car batteries would run down and the tower would not be taking any data. We had several days when we had trouble with the generator or the batteries and we had to haul them back and forth to the road. Remember, the road is at least a mile away through the sloggy tundra and the batteries and the generator weigh about 40-50 pounds. Not a fun time. Also, we had to change the oil in the generator every other day and pack in 5 gallons of gasoline once a week.
Now, we go out to the tower, download the data and that is it! This means that we can also take Sundays off, now. Woohoo!
So as you can see, it is all about saving work. Smile

Hope you are having a great summer!