Power Solution for 2012 Olympic Torch Relay Vehicle

Solar PV

Consultancy

product integration

The BBC approached Antares with a challenge that was outside their normal experience, mission critical and a once in a life time opportunity - the 2012 Summer Olympics.

The challenge presented by the project manager was to power a mobile broadcast capability that would operate the entire 70 days, throughout the UK, without the opportunity for any re-takes, or delays. The torch had to leave Land’s End and arrive in London for the opening ceremony, delivering real-time images of each and every torch bearer to the internet.  Editing of the days footage into bite size pieces for the evening news, and special reports required 3 hours back up.

Antares worked with the BBC to define the power requirement and duty cycle of the vehicle in order to make critical calculations for worse case and best case to allow a view to be taken.

The key issue was the slow speed of the vehicle whilst following the torch bearers which meant that the alternator was not at full output.

Using our our experience in charging we extracted the maximum current from the alternator to charge the GEL batteries using the uActive DC charger.

Also to take advantage of summer sunlight we added two solar PV panels to the roof of the vehicle. 

The system status was continually monitored by our intelligent battery monitor ensuring the broadcast engineers knew that the system was not going to let them down.

As a final insurance policy we specified a charger connected to the horsebox mains inlet, allowing for overnight recharging in an emergency, in the end this wasn’t used and the system operated as intended.

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