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

An extremely advanced camera is mounted on top of the tower. It observes the strikes from the bombs and canons during exercises of the jet fighters both 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 continually.

We use transparent glass-glass panels. These panels generate energy on the rear side as well as the front, 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 shown in the photo). This fuel cell works on ethanol and kicks in when a too-low state of charge is detected in the batteries.