Great Lakes Research Center Buoy Intelligent Power Management System

The Tidas 900 marine research buoy, by S2 Yachts, provides invaluable research data to Great Lakes researchers from the time the ice melts in the Spring to a few weeks before the ice starts forming at the end of the season. Unfortunately, due to the lack of peak sunlight hours near the end of the season, the buoys are unable to maintain normal operations. While continuing to run their normal operations the buoys will discharge the battery bank below the critical threshold. This puts the buoy into an unstable and unpredictable state. In the past this unstable state has resulted in pulling the buoy out of the water before the end of the useful season. In Fall 2013, the Robotics Systems Enterprise was tasked with identifying and implementing a solution to this power management problem.