The Commissioner for Irish Lights is a key maritime organisation tasked with delivering essential safety around the coast of Ireland, providing aids to navigation (AtoN) through modern digital services such as GPS and Radar as well more traditional resources including lighthouses, buoys and beacons. As part of a continuous drive to minimise running and maintenance costs as well as reduce its carbon footprint, renewable energy sources such as photovoltaic solar power, batteries for energy storage and low-energy LED light sources are used extensively for remotely located installations. Now, Irish Lights has turned its attention to increasing the efficiency and reliability of its lighthouse drive train technology and Mclennan’s systems integration team has recently supplied a novel custom designed motion control system that drives a 5,000 kg lantern optical system at a constant speed from a 24 V battery source.
Mclennan were involved from the outset of the project and as part of its technical review procedure began work on a proposal that that would meet Irish Lights’ demanding specification and provide a long life, low maintenance and cost-effective solution for its unmanned lighthouse on Tory Island – some nine miles (14.4 km) off the north-west coast of County Donegal.
