Constant voltage transformer guides ships
An
Advance Electronics product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team
Feb 14, 2007
When the Commissioners of Irish Lights realised they had a power supply problem to one of their UPS protected lighthouses, they contacted Advance Electronics to provide a solution.
Disturbances and irregularities within the mains electrical supply are not uncommon, and are often a major inconvenience resulting in equipment downtime, component damage or lost/corrupted data.
For some applications however, power supply problems can result in far worse consequences.
When the Commissioners of Irish Lights realised they had a power supply problem to one of their UPS protected lighthouses, they contacted the engineering team at Advance Electronics to provide a solution.
The Fanad Head lighthouse was first built in 1817, and it is still a fully operational active aid to sea navigation.
The modern 300mm catadioptric cylindrical refractor is 39m above sea level, and produces a precisely timed light beam visible for up to 18 nautical miles.
The high-density lights were initially powered via an uninterruptible power supply (UPS), which was intended to correct the poor local mains supply and provide power back up in the event of a total mains failure.
Unfortunately the UPS was unable to provide a supply that was robust enough to power the lights on the strict two-second flash cycle that was required.
During each flash cycle the UPS input voltage would drop to a level that caused the UPS to switch to battery mode.
This operational environment inevitably led to premature failure of the UPS batteries, and ultimately failure of the lighthouse itself.
The engineers at Advance drew upon their experience of constant voltage transformers (CVTs) to swiftly design a bespoke power-conditioning unit to solve the problem.
A solution was designed to raise and stabilise the mains supply voltage, whilst maintaining the UPS input voltage at a constant level throughout the operational cycle of the lighthouse.
Once the Advance Electronics CVT unit was installed at Fanad Head the improvement in operational reliability was immediately apparent.
The corrected supply voltage prevented the UPS from switching to batteries every two seconds during the flash cycle.
The Advance CVT resulted in significantly increased UPS battery life, and more importantly increased the dependability of the lighthouse itself.
Now, as it was nearly 200 years ago, the lighthouse at Fanad Head can again be relied upon to guide mariners navigating the Atlantic Ocean off the North Western coast of Ireland.
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