Solar panels set up vertically in Sweden by Sunna Group use an arrangement that is also expected to be useful for generating power at the South Pole. Photo by Silvana Ovaitt, NREL.
“Power is just a very limited resource at the South Pole,” said Amy Bender, a physicist at Argonne who is responsible for the infrastructure of existing South Pole Telescope systems. The government of New Zealand deployed three wind turbines in 2009, with the electricity generated by them supplying power to that country’s Scott Base and the United States’ McMurdo Station. McMurdo is about 850 miles north of the South Pole and is the landing location for all the fuel that eventually goes to the South Pole.
Using the NREL-developed Renewable Energy Integration and Optimization tool, which calculates the economic viability of a renewable project, the researchers determined the least-cost scenario to supply a consistent 170 kW of power for new research equipment at the South Pole involves a hybrid system involving six wind turbines, 180 kilowatts of solar, and 3.4 megawatt-hours of battery energy storage.
What cannot be seen by the naked eye, or even by a less-powerful telescope, reveals a wavelength of light that measures only about a millimeter. The water vapor in Earth’s atmosphere interferes with observing these tiny wavelengths, making the placement of the telescopes critically important.