Military exercise terrain and shooting range air force at “De Vliehors”. This is de most westerly area (inhabited) of the island ‘Vlieland’, north of The Netherlands. It is an extremely remote and hostile location, dozens of kilometers away from the nearest grid access.

On top of the tower, an extremely advanced camera is mounted, which observes the hits from the bombs and canons from exercises of the jet fighters day and night. It sends the images via a radio link to the command center.

12 full size solar panels charge 2 lithium batteries and supply the energy for the camera, day and night.

We use transparent glass-glass panels. These panels generate energy at the rear side as well, resulting in much more yield: we see 50-60% above the specified Wp of the panels.

We have installed the entire system in a watertight stainless steel cabinet because of the extremely hostile environment: storm, sand, salt water, heat and frost. There is no shelter here.

In the cabinet, 2 lithium batteries from MG Energy are mounted, with a total storage capacity of 15 kWh. The 2 large solar controllers, inverter and monitoring device are from Victron Energy.

The system is being monitored by a 4G data connection. If necessary, we can operate and control the system remotely.

As a backup, there is a fuel cell (not on the photo). This fuel cell works on ethanol and kicks in at a too low state of charge of the batteries.