Blizzard winds to power Australian Antarctic stations

The fury of Antarctica’s coastal winds is to be harnessed to power an Australian Antarctic station. Australian Antarctic Division projects totalling $6.35million and involving German and Australian technology will result in Antarctica’s first large-scale wind turbine installation, providing nearly a megawatt of power to Australia’s Mawson station.

The turbines are to be provided by the German company Enercon and installed by the company’s Australian agents, Powercorp Pty Ltd, of Darwin. A contract for the work, which will begin next summer, was signed in Darwin in August 2001.

The wind turbines are the first serious attempt by any country to obtain a significant electricity supply from the world’s most powerful winds — the gravity-induced katabatic winds that howl down to the coast of Antarctica from the inland icecap, reaching speeds over 250km/h.

The Mawson system will generate almost 50 times the power of existing Antarctic wind-power systems while having a much lower environmental impact than the current option of burning diesel fuel, now used throughout Antarctica. When the system is fully developed, an Antarctic station will for the first time be able to use a renewable source to meet virtually all its energy needs.

The use of diesel fuel to power Australia’s Antarctic activities is from an environmental perspective far from ideal. The fuel must be transported from ship to shore and stored at stations before being used. While the risk of spillage has been minimised it remains a possibility.

The Mawson wind turbine system will rank among the world’s most innovative, including the installations at Windy Hill, Queensland, and Denham in Western Australia. It will feature three 300kW wind turbine generators with associated power house control equipment. The turbines will be three-bladed, variable speed machines of 30m diameter, mounted on a 34m tapered steel tower.

The powerhouse control equipment, manufactured by Powercorp, was originally designed for small, isolated Australian and South East Asian communities. Powercorp will modify the system to integrate the wind turbine generators into Mawson’s power grid to provide completely clean, renewable heat and electrical energy for up to 80 percent of the year.

Equipment will be delivered and foundations built in the 2001–2002 summer, with the powerhouse control systems and wind turbine generators installed the following summer.

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