Cut Your Lighting Energy Cost With MER Marine LEDs.
MER Marine LED Lights
LED lights were introduced as a practical electrical component in 1962. The 50 years since have seen many refinements and innovations to arrive at today’s energy efficient, work-ready lights. The brands today run the spectrum of cheap, check-out aisle flashlights, to four digit stadium lights used in professional sporting arenas. They are becoming increasingly popular in the demanding marine market because of their simplicity, durability, and most importantly, their cost savings through energy efficiency.
High Efficiency
Here is the math: A working vessel can expect to pay $.50/kWh to make electricity at today’s fuel price. A typical vessel lighting load is around 4.5 kWh. Running lights 12 hours a day, a boat will burn through 54 kWh. At $.50 per kWh, that pencils out to $27.00 per day just for light. A vessel using 4.5 kWh can expect to pay about $4800 to retrofit with LEDs. Doing so will conservatively cut the lighting load by 80%. $27 per day becomes $5.40. A vessel working 180 days out of the year will save $3,888. That will pay for the trip to Hawaii when the season is done.
Warranty
The warranty on our lights is 50,000 hrs. At 12 hours a day, 180 days a year, the warranty expires in a little over 23 years. At $3,888 in savings per year, that’s $90,000 at today’s fuel prices, or a 1,875% return on your investment. Instant on, instant off, zero warm up time, unaffected by vibration, and dimmable. No 5 minute shut down when equipment kicks on, no filaments to deteriorate from cycling, or breakage from vibration. LED’s are here, and ready for working vessels.
What Is It?
The new MER Alt-Spark takes wind power, solar power, and power from the enclosed external combustion generator and concentrates the power. This power is concentrated in the large battery bank and is available to power A.C. and D.C. loads. 12V or 24V loads may be powered by the solar/wind hybrid. The unit also produces heat for export, using the mediums of circulating hot water or forced air.
Why Do I Need This?
With ultra-low exhaust emissions, high portability, and operated remotely, the Alt-Spark can power over twenty types of sites. If you need power at an environmental clean-up site for example-you need clean power that wont’ make the site worse. Likewise the MER Alt-Spark provides emergency telecom power. The module is easy to deploy and quick to set-up.
How Long Does It Take To Set-up?
One day. It is fully self contained, and with moderate wind and solar activity, needs fuel at three-month intervals.The Alt-Spark Was Concieved To Fill A Need
Tyler Allen Explains: “Our customer came to us requesting a power supply that could fulfill the exacting requirements of remote, off-grid deployment. Specifically, the unit had to provide:
• Service interval of and operate for six months with zero human contact
• 20 year service life
• Function in 7 feet of snow and extreme icing conditions
• Withstand sustained winds of 120 mph
• Provide 4kWh per day for 6 months (730 kWh total)
• Be modular and deployable anywhere
• Operate at high elevations
• Run for 6 months on less than 100 gallons of fuel
What’s Inside The Enclosure?
The aluminum clad enclosure houses the electrical panel, control panels, batteries, propane fuel (optional low-emission diesel power is available), and the satellite comunnication equipment. The satellite communication module lets your operator monitor from one to a hundred modules. Remote control of the unit is an option as well.
The fan-powered hot air duct can easily be connected to warm a building, boat, truck, heavy equipment, or any other area that needs clean dry heat. Marine engineer, Tyler Allen is comfortable designing for small spaces, and he designed the Alt-Spark to have MER durability.
Our answer was the Alt-Spark, a power platform designed to meet these demanding requirements. The heart of the Alt-Spark Platform is an enormous battery bank. The standard unit has a 700 amp hour capacity which can be upgraded to three times that, conservatively pumping 84kw hours of power before any recharging of the battery bank is required. In this way our “bank” takes the place of a traditional power generator.
This bank, of course, must be replenished as the reserves are drained. Recharging is provided by any combination of three possible means, these being wind, solar and a high efficiency, external combustion engine. Certain considerations must be taken when developing a power plant that utilizes alternative sources of energy such as wind and water. Namely, that the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine. Having a large battery bank allows the Alt-Spark to capture the full potential of wind and solar in the batteries as they are available and bank it until it is needed. This provides the buffer needed between windy and sunny days. In the event that insufficient wind or sun is available to adequately recharge the batteries, an external combustion engine (Stirling) is programmed to come on line and keep the batteries from becoming dangerously depleted. To keep from wasting valuable fuel reserves, the Stirling runs only long enough to maintain battery voltage. Once wind or sun is again available, the batteries are quickly returned to full capacity.
The design intent of the Alt-Spark is to supply power with near zero green house gas emissions and minimal operating and maintenance costs. The entire system is sophisticated enough to run maintenance free on a six month interval while providing the needed power.
Take A Look Inside:
