Question: If you were part of a research team visiting an uncharted, and had £40,900 to spend on energy resources, what would you buy? (electricity that would keep you fridges and freezers and heaters running in you premade lab and houses, bering in mind you can not change the island in any way when you leave i.e: you can't cut down trees.

Heather Eyre answered on 25 Jun 2013:

Wow, that is a really complex questions with lots of different things to think about.

It’d be really important to have a rough idea of the climate before you go – will you need heating (if it was like Saint Martin or st Lucia you’d probably manage without. Is it tropical, wet forest or does material dry out quickly it’s self.
What was the aim of the research – would you have any biological samples that needed storing at fridge or even colder temperatures.
would you need anything more than a camping light during the night time – as in would you be working in the dark or just reading/sleeping during the dark hours?
And would you be allowed to collect fire wood- not cutting down ant wood – just collecting fallen wood. As you can cook and keep warm using only fallen wood if the climate is relatively dry.

If the island gets lots of sun I would use a solar panel array and batteries to power equipment like fridges, if needed. The best heating source I think would be gas heaters (that run on bottles), but it would depend on how long you were staying and on the climate of the island. It’s a much cleaner than a petrol generator – but I think you would probably need a generator on standby in case the batteries failed – it wouldn’t take long to for samples to spoil. Though I’d prefer not to need to use it. You’d take any empty gas bottles away with you.