Living Observatory Sensor Network

This winter was one with a lot of heavy weather. There were two major blizzards that each dumped ~2ft of snow, and a few windy rainy storms. The big February nor’easter had winds over 60 mph and dumped over 30” of snow. Much of plymouth and cape cod lost power for several days. Schools were closed for a week.

Even when the power doesn’t go out completely modulations on the grid can surge and stress equipment.

During the February power outage the batteries —which had been in use since the network was first installed — failed and didn’t recover.

Over the past few weeks Brian has been servicing the system and replacing batteries. Last week we installed new back up batteries and universal power supply units. Here are some images from that day.

Old power supply. These were heavy. We “recycle” the USPs at e-waste solutions in Plymouth, who were friendly and strong.

Brian with the new power supply units. These were also heavy.

Brian unpacking the new battery for the fiber hub