The ENVRI community (Environmental and Earth System Research Infrastructures) covers multiple scientific domains, such as oceanography, atmosphere, geophysics and biology. Whilst very different in terms of scope and technology, the research infrastructures and their personnel face common technical challenges related to the fact that field equipment is often installed in remote sites. Specifically, a large proportion of field equipment needs to be autonomous and sometimes operates in extreme conditions.
Theme 1, “Technical innovation”, aims to provide and improve the technology used by environmental RIs by developing internal cooperation synergy and by collaborating with the industries that propose solutions for RIs. WP3, “Improving measurement networks: common technological solutions”, is focused on energy issues (WP3.1: Enhancing observation capacity in remote sites: improving energy production) and data transmission (WP3.3: Robust data provision:
data transmission and near real time QC) in extreme environments (WP3.2: Testing robustness towards extreme conditions).
This report deals with the work for WP3.1, which was conducted between 2015 and 2018, as a collaborative project involving CNRS EPOS, ANAEE and ACTRIS.
The main questions for Task 3.1 were:
- What is needed to provide energy to isolated scientific stations?
- What are the most sustainable technical solutions regarding the specific needs of RIs?
- What do RIs actually use?
- How to improve RI use of these systems?
The report gathers information on energy production and storage using land-based instruments. It contains advice for potential non-specialist users, with technical abstracts and data sheets on each technology. The report is the main outcome of Task 3.1, and is attached as ANNEX I.
This deliverable has also benefitted from interaction with other ENVRI+ partners, and IFREMER’s contribution concerning energy solutions in marine environments, which can be found in ANNEX II.
The report in ANNEX I is composed of five main chapters.