Antarctic conservation blog

Thar she blows!

George, Thursday 11 March 2010

Temperature: -14°C
Wind Speed: 20 knots
Temp with wind chill: -34°C

When we arrived in Antarctica and approached Scott Base for the first time, I was surprised to notice 3 large wind turbines above the base on Crater Hill. I’d never seen them in any photos of the area and had read that the electricity for the base came from diesel generators, which it had, until last December. Now the generators are silent and the base is run entirely on wind power, with the surplus electricity going to McMurdo Station ( the American Antarctic base located 3km away).

Building the windfarm © Antarctica New Zealand / Hayden Harrison

The wind turbines themselves are specially designed for low temperature operation, and so they do not have gearboxes with oil that can ice up. Erecting them was an engineering feat in itself and the foundations had to be made in New Zealand and transported here by ship due to the difficulty of setting concrete in extreme low temperatures.

Fitting the nose cap © Antarctica New Zealand / Hayden Harrison

Scott Base has always prided itself on being as green on the inside as it is on the outside, and this is a very significant step towards sustainability. It’s a great feeling to realise that every time you switch on a light or log on to a computer, the juice is provided by the wind whistling around outside!

Posted in Antarctica

3 Responses to “Thar she blows!”

March 15th, 2010 at 5:48 pm
andy @ green energy scene says:

Beautiful! I love these turbines - so elegant. I live in Scotland where we have the largest on-shore wind energy farm in Europe at Whitelee, its a joy to behold. Hopefully your project will benefit for years to come from this technology!
March 24th, 2010 at 10:40 pm
Bente says:

I like this too - Denmark was the pioneer in this technology and we also have tons of these new windmills - in the seventies I visited this giant http://www.tvind.dk/TextPage.asp?MenuItemID=55&SubMenuItemID=160
March 29th, 2010 at 6:54 am
Nick Mayo says:

Great to see renewables installed at long last. Energy was and is key to polar trips.

Would you guys be able to update the kilowatt/hours generated by the wind turbines each day or week when you blog? An image of an aurora and a wind turbine in the foreground would be fab.