Restricted Airport Test Center Relies on Solar Taxiway Lights

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Incorporated ordered ICAO compliant Model 601 solar-powered LED taxiway lights. The lights will be used for the General Atomics Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Airport Project and installed at the restricted Airport Grey Butte Flight Test Center in California.

With an increasing need for night flight-testing, General Atomics required an upgrade to include a fully functional conventional runway. A critical issue that needed to be addressed was that during night flights, depending on the wind direction, a plane might need to land at the opposite end of the airfield where runway lighting is not currently in place. As the Model A601 lights can be installed in minutes without trenching or cabling, they provided a versatile solution and further allowed planes to taxi at a greater distance from command posts.

The blue lens on Model A601 solar LED airport lights also provide daytime visual guidance that better defines the edges of the taxiway and increases airport safety. In addition to proven reliability and durability, our solar airport lights offer significant savings over traditional hard-wired systems due to lower energy consumption, installation and maintenance costs. This served to meet the cost restrictions of the project, while also meeting the strict safety requirements for night flying.

Automatically switching on at dusk and off at dawn, our robust solar LED lights are built to rigorous industrial quality standards and operate reliably in even the harshest environmental conditions. Requiring no scheduled maintenance for 5 years on average, the lights are widely used by the US military as well as hundreds of commercial and general aviation airports worldwide.

 

 

Image by Bobak Ha'Eri [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)]