Wide Angle: Wind Power for Antarctic Base Station

May 28, 2009

Wow. This is not your garden variety wind turbine installation, eh? This is Princess Elisabeth station in Antarctica. It's a Belgian research facility located "upon the Utsteinen nunatak in the Dronning Maud Land (East Antarctica)," according to the station website. Better yet, if you have Google Earth installed on your computer, you can fly right to it. Princess Elisabeth is designed to study the effects of climate change. Fittingly, it's also designed to be the first zero emission research station. Usually, diesel fuel is brought in to power generators for Antarctic stations. But not this one.

As you can see, the Belgians have opted for wind turbines. The turbines are built by a Scottish company called Proven Energy, which has been in the renewables game for nearly 30 years. It's a good match, as there is plenty of wind blowing across Antarctica. But setting up wind turbines in such conditions isn't a cinch. To find out more about the installation, I called up Richard Caldow, Operations Manager at Proven Energy. It was one of those rare, sunny days in Scotland, so Richard took the phone outside to chat. The singing birds add a nice backdrop to the podcast!

I started by asking Richard to give me the backstory on how a Scottish company got chosen to install wind turbines at a Belgian research station at the bottom of the world:

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