ROBERT BERTRAND

Wildlife tracking solar stations in grizzly country do not fail slowly. They fail completely in a single encounter, and the data loss is permanent. I was asked to help redesign a wolf telemetry base station in the Bow Valley Wildlife Corridor near Canmore in Alberta that a University of Calgary wildlife biology team had been

Glacier monitoring solar power failures on active ice sheets are compounded failures. The cold kills the battery, the dead battery kills the instrument, and the lost data cannot be recovered because the glacier moved while the system was down. I was asked to review the power system for a strain rate monitoring station on the

Volcanic monitoring solar failures are not gradual. They happen fast, in one season, and they take expensive instruments with them. I was asked to review a power system failure at a SO2 spectrometer station on the south flank of a stratovolcano in the Cascades that a USGS volcano hazards team had been operating for 14

Seismic monitoring solar power systems corrupt data in a way that is genuinely difficult to distinguish from tectonic activity. I was asked to review a data quality problem at a broadband seismic monitoring station in the Charlevoix Seismic Zone near Baie-Saint-Paul, Quebec. The station ran a Nanometrics Trillium Compact broadband seismometer connected to a Centaur

Air quality solar power failures at remote monitoring stations create compliance gaps that cannot be retroactively filled. If the regulator requires continuous hourly PM2.5 data and the system goes down at 6 AM those hours are gone. I was called to troubleshoot a recurring data gap problem at a PM2.5 monitoring station on a mine

Weather station solar failures in Ontario happen quietly. The station keeps transmitting data but the numbers are wrong. You do not find out until it matters most, during the worst storm of the winter. I was asked to review the power system for an agricultural weather station on a grain farm near Listowel in Perth

Remote sensor solar power systems fail field researchers in a way that is almost impossible to diagnose without a spectrum analyser. I was asked to review a persistent data quality problem at a water quality monitoring station on the Grand River near Elora in Wellington County. The station used a Campbell Scientific CR1000 datalogger connected

Radio repeater solar failures in northern Ontario have a specific failure signature. The repeater does not go silent all at once. I was called to diagnose a solar power failure at a VHF emergency services repeater on a ridge site above Chapleau in the Sudbury District. This site served as the primary link for OPP

Fish hatchery solar failures do not announce themselves before the stock dies. I was called to review the power system at a brook trout nursery near Thessalon in the Algoma District operated by a conservation authority that had experienced a catastrophic stock loss the previous August. The facility ran 12 fibreglass rearing tanks with a

Weather buoy solar failures on the Great Lakes do not happen because the equipment is wrong. They happen because the energy budget was calculated for dry land. I was brought in to review the power system specification for a Lake Huron nearshore monitoring buoy deployed by a freshwater research group out of Owen Sound. The