wind power to supply the arctic base

[jonathan]

Its my understanding that oil is brought in from the planes, and that this is used to supply the base with electricity and heat. Why not harness the strong winds to help power the base?

[Paul]

Hi Jonathan,

You've made a very good point. As the windiest place on earth, Antarctica should be the most obvious place to use wind power, a few details:

It's so windy in Antarctica that wind generators can be damaged by the very strength of the wind they're trying to harvest.

Antarctic bases don't use that much power. Like anywhere else in the world, storing the power at times of plenty for the times of no wind poses a problem. There's no "grid" of any kind for the excess power to be passed on to.

Fuel is always brought in by ship or overland wherever possible as this is the cheapest option and economics will always prevail, so while not ideal, the current system is not as wasteful as it may seem.

The Australian's are ahead of the rest in using wind power for Antarctic bases, but then, they do have a base in the windiest place on earth - Mawson station http://www.aad.gov.au/default.asp?casid=763

Wind power in Antarctic goes right back to the "Heroic Age", Roald Amundsen amongst others had a windmill onboard his ship, the Fram to generate electricity when he made his historic South Pole journey in 1911. The windmill was damaged at one point by excessive winds however.

[Keith]

I can corroborate the fact that winds can be strong enough to destroy equipment.

Back in 72/73 BAS installed a small wind generator on South Georgia for a two-man glaciologist's hut (up on Mount Hodges I believe it was). Its designers had said it was tested up to wind speeds of 100mph. It was destroyed just a few months after installation when the winds at the base (at sea level) were gusting to 80 knots.

[Nigel Dean]

Hi I belive a wind generator was fitted at Halley in 95. I am not sure how it got on. Wind power would be an option but at Halley the largest electrical load is when it is cold and calm. It can get down to -50.C. When it is windy it is usualy mild and thus the electrical load is low. I was generator mechanic at Rothera and Tractor Mec. at Halley so this is from personal experiance. Small solar pannells are used on remote weather stations and to charge the batteries of the radios used in the field.

[jonathan]

I imagine most of the fuel taken to antarctica is for heating. Now there are other ways of storing energy from wind power, but using the electricity to crack water into hydrogen and oxygen may make the most sense for antarctica. Getting tanks to antarctica for store the hydrogen would be the largest hurdle, another form of storage would be underground injection.

[Paul Ward]

This seems to be working well:

http://www.aad.gov.au/apps/operations/electrical.asp

[floating_doc]

The BAS base at King Edward Point, South Georgia has a wind generator linked up to a bank of batteries. When I was there in 2002-3 it spent most of its time out of action, I think because of cracks in the structure. When it worked it was quite effective but put out a lot of heat as dumped energy when the wind was strong (as it very often was!). However, it only supplied enough electricity to power one building.

Interestingly, the old whaling station across the bay at Grytviken got its electricity supply from hydroelectric power from a dammed lake (Gull Lake) - and this was 100-odd years ago! I believe that the South Georgia Government may be considering putting in a modern hydroelectric scheme which would power the entire BAS base and government officer's house etc, cutting down the need for fuel to be shipped in.

Sue

[jonathan]

I have a few different ideas on storing the wind energy.


first theres the tried and true method of hydrolysis. Cyrogenic high pressure tanks can store enormous volumes.


Another idea is to use the electricity to grow algea, which would then be fed to bacteria. The decay of the algee would produce methane, which could be stored and burned when needed.

A third possibility is using the energy to melt ice into warm water and storing it in insulated tanks. When energy is needed during the calm cold weather, the liquid water is poured into pistons and allowed to turn into ice. The expansion of the size would provide the kinetic energy for heating the base.