Lighting the surf: Done!
Lighting the surf proved to be harder than we thought, but we’ve done it. The lights are working and we’ve been surfing at night. It has been a long journey.
First, we had to do a major upgrade to our generator … a 25 kW generator was bought in Bali. Trucking it over had to wait until the end of the wet. Then much of the power system had to be upgraded, including a long power line from the hotel out to the headland. This proved to be still insufficient to carry 8 kW!! So we bought two more generators which are stationed on the headland just for the lights.
Then we learned that high quality lights with good reflectors cannot be purchased in Lombok. Yet, another trip to Bali and some extra lights were bought. A large steel support structure was made in Lombok, lights were attached and it became obvious that a better quality was needed. Eventually we designed and built our own system … entirely home made with help from several Lombok tradesmen. We now have four 2000 Watt lights on the headland that are bright enough for surfing at night. The Heaven on the Planet team is really happy to be the first hotel in the world to deliberately light the surf zone. And we’ve got some more innovations planned.