Abstract Advances in low-power instrumentation and communications now often make energy storage the limiting factor for long-term autonomous oceanographic measurements. Recent advances in photovoltaic cells, with efficiencies now close to 30%, make solar power potentially viable even for vehicles such as floats that only surface intermittently. A simple application, the development of a solar-powered Argos recovery beacon, is described here to illustrate the technology. The 65-cm2 solar array, submersible to at least 750 dbar, powers an Argos beacon. Tests indicate that with minor improvements the beacon will run indefinitely at any latitude equatorward of about 50°. Scaling up this design to current operational profiling floats, each profile could easily be powered by a few hours of solar charging, a shorter time than is currently being used for Argos data communications.