« Stick It In Your Ear | Main | Welcome, 2003 EL61 »

Solar Thermal at the Bottom of the World

The Halley VI station in Antarctica (we noted the winning design just a couple of weeks ago) will be the first Halley station to make use of renewable energy. From the outset, Halley VI will make use of a solar thermal system for heating water, taking advantage of the 24-hour sunlight of the Antarctic summer; as the modular station grows, the design allows for the introduction of solar photovoltaic and wind power. Electricity generation is augmented by a special ultra-cold-weather diesel generator -- sorry, biodiesel fans, the South Pole's just too cold for anything other than a special aviation formulation of petrodiesel.

But given that petrodiesel may be harder to get by the time Halley VI is operational, the station's ability to use a variety of power sources means that replacing the diesel generator with an ultra-cold-weather fuel cell fortunately shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Comments (1)

wimbi:

Diesels don't like very cold weather, but stirling engines love it. the colder the better. These people should check out stirlings relative to diesels.

About

This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on July 29, 2005 2:48 PM.

The previous post in this blog was Stick It In Your Ear.

The next post in this blog is Welcome, 2003 EL61.

Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.

Powered by
Movable Type 3.34