Wildlife-For-All: Wildlife Filming

Fuel Cell Systems has supplied several direct methanol fuel cells to a wildlife filming company to power its camera equipment. The units provides Wildlife-For-All with a secure, remote source of power that won’t disturb the animals in their natural habitat.

Wildlife-for-all provide remote, unmanned cameras to record animals, such as the white tailed sea eagle, osprey, red kite, hen harrier and gannets in their natural habitat. It’s important that the animals are filmed in their natural environment, so the camera, encoder and radio transmitter need a quiet, unobtrusive, remote power source.

To help power Wildlife-for-all’s equipment, Fuel Cell Systems supplied several 600 Wh/day fuel cells each with ten litres of methanol which can fuel the systems for 40 days.

Wildlife-for-all’s Managing Director, Peter Mackay, said,

“Finding a source of remote power has been difficult. In the past I’ve used solar and wind, but they’ve attracted unwanted attention from both the wildlife we’re filming and from vandals. The great thing about the fuel cell is that it can be covertly installed, giving it more protection.”

Tom Sperrey, Managing Director at Fuel Cell Systems said,

“We’ve received an increasing number of fuel cell enquiries from cameramen. The most attractive benefit seems to be the fuel cell’s size. It’s a lot smaller than solar panels or a wind turbine and more portable.ut they’ve attracted unwanted attention from both the wildlife we’re filming and from vandals. The great thing about the fuel cell is that it can be covertly installed, giving it more protection.”

"It’s also a far more reliable source of power as its output doesn’t depend on the weather. Fuel cells give production teams greater freedom over where and how they can film and are quickly becoming a popular source of remote power for camera equipment”.