Home / Uses / Lighting a remote boat ramp at night

Lights at the ramp before the sun comes up

Fishers launch in the dark and return after it, at remote ramps with no lights. This page is honest that ramp lighting alone is a tiny load, and looks at when a bigger system makes sense.

Lighting is a small job

A few LED floodlights over a ramp, a light at the wash-down bay and a lit noticeboard draw very little. They are usually best served by a modest battery with a local charger or a nearby grid connection. A 15 kW hydrogen system with a 30 to 40 kWh battery is much more than ramp lights need, and recommending it for that alone would be poor advice.

What it would keep running

Ramp floodlights
Fish cleaning station water pump
Toilet block lights and pump
Volunteer rescue shed chargers
Weather and tide display

When a waterfront site has more

Some remote ramps sit beside a fish cleaning station with a water pump, a toilet block, a coastguard or volunteer rescue shed, a weather display or a small kiosk. Once a site carries those loads, especially a rescue base that must stay ready through storms, a system with weeks of stored hydrogen begins to earn its place.

In that setting the ramp lights become one of several loads on the same supply, and the system's instant switch-over means a volunteer rescue crew launching in the dark is not left fumbling for torches on a slippery concrete ramp when the line drops in the middle of a callout.

How it works →

The H2OME loop: an electrolyser splits water into hydrogen, the hydrogen is stored in a tank for weeks, a fuel cell turns it into electricity for your home, and the water returns to the loop.

Charging at the water's edge

Off the grid, a wind turbine on an exposed point is the natural source, since charging comes from wind, micro-hydro or off-peak grid power. Round trip efficiency is 30% or less, so the turbine has to cover those losses. Equipment would sit above storm surge and spray, in a sealed enclosure. Councils or clubs that own ramps would decide.

Questions

Should a council use this to light one ramp?

No. Ramp lights alone draw so little that a small battery and local charger are a far better fit. This system only makes sense where a waterfront site also carries heavier loads such as a rescue base or amenity block.

Can it sit near the water?

It would need to sit above storm surge in a sealed, ventilated enclosure protected from spray. Siting would be planned with the ramp's owner and the installer, taking local flooding history into account.

What would charge it at a remote ramp?

Off the grid, a wind turbine is the realistic choice. It needs to produce enough to cover round trip losses of 30% or less, which a measured wind assessment would confirm before anything is installed.

Elsewhere

Every use →

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