Scottish Wind Turbines Providing Energy In Extreme Antarctica

Posted on 18. Feb, 2009 by Ross in Energy News

The extreme weather conditions of Antarctica were always thought to be prohibitive to the use of wind turbines to generate energy for the 60+ scientific research stations littering the white continent. Around 4,000 personnel man the stations during the winter, with a quarter of that number also braving the -60 degrees Celcius temperatures and gusting winds of up to 322 kilometres per hour which characterise the depths of winter.

Scottish company Proven Energy has now changed all that with the installation of eight wind turbines at Belgium’s Princess Elizabeth Station: the only station on the continent running using only renewable energy sources. Having previously weathered Slovenian ice storms and Japanese typhoons, the turbines are experiencing average wind speeds of 53mph which is likely to make the station the highest-outputting small wind farm system in the world. The turbines also compliment the station’s other energy generation systems, which include both solar-thermal and photovoltaic arrays, as opposed to most of the other science stations which rely on diesel generators.

With the technology to now harness energy from some of the world’s strongest winds, and global energy shortages likely to escalate over the coming decade, the question which now needs to be addressed is: Can we develop suitable energy storage and transport technologies to export Antartica’s energy resource globally, whilst maintaining it’s pristine environment?