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How Engineers Are Building a Power Station At the South Pole
KentuckyFC writes "One of the more ambitious projects at the South Pole is the Askaryan Radio Array, a set of radio antennas under the ice that will listen for the tell tale signals of high energy neutrinos passing by. This array will eventually be over a thousand times bigger than the current largest neutrino detector: Icecube, which monitors a cubic kilometer of ice next door to the planned new observatory. But there's a problem. How do you supply 24/7 power to dozens of detectors spread over such a vast area in the middle of the Antarctic? The answer is renewable energy power stations that exploit the sun during the summer and the wind all year round. The first of these stations is now up and running at the South Pole and producing power. It is also helping to uncover and iron out the various problems that these stations are likely to encounter. For example; where to put the batteries needed to supply continuous power when all else fails. The team's current approach is to bury the battery to protect it from temperature extremes. That works well but makes maintenance so difficult that scaling this approach to dozens of power stations doesn't seem feasible. That's a problem for the future but for the moment, green power has finally come to the white continent."
Is obviously nuclear power.
From shoggoths?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Why not microwave transmission? Line of sight should be relatively easy to deal with over there. Not a lot of buildings in the way.
That sounds very cool.
Whatever you do don't get the update.
The goal is 95%. My bets are 30% - 70% diesel powered.
Ok - I looked at the article. I now think 80% plus will be diesel. The whole thing looks like about 5kW at most. They have a few toys which will fail in the dead of night (180*24 hours of straight 'night' at the pole), and no one is going to climb the thing to fix it.
"Neither is it clear from this paper that the stations have been able to provide their design goal of 120W of continuous power for 95 per cent of the time."
So has green power come to antartica? no.
Here is the real story:
http://jeffreydonenfeld.com/blog/2012/12/the-south-poles-fuel-supply/
They want to know how to generate power at a place that gets lots of sun half the year and has a steady wind?
And they chose solar and wind? wow..shocking.
Stop asking questions that are answered in the in article as a headline.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Cooling will certainly not be a problem and the geological activity is minimal (if at all present), so earthquakes and tsunamis are out of the question.
Real system is here:
http://jeffreydonenfeld.com/blog/2012/12/the-south-poles-fuel-supply/
The one outlined here looks wimpy and small, 5kW?
TFA says "one problem is the continuity of power. The wind speed at the pole averages between 4 and 8 metres per second, depending on the height above the ground. That’s just enough to turn the blades on the wind turbines but it also raises the prospect of periods when the wind is too weak to generate power."
Sounds like a good place to employ a reliable, load-following small modular reactor.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
"green power has finally come to the white continent."
Not so fast, what about the Ross Island Wind Farm?
http://www.meridianenergy.co.nz/about-us/generating-energy/wind/ross-island/
Meridian Energy installed three wind turbines in 2010
http://www.meridianenergy.co.nz/about-us/media-centre/media-releases/wind-farms/antarctic-wind-farm-exceeding-expectations-for-antarctic-bases/
Nuclear decay is how things were done before wind turbines and solar panels.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator
Personally, I'd love to see Stirling radioisotope generators put into real world use.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
He always does. Every single thread, he'll form an opinion in 0.02s flat and once locked into brain, he'll argue it until the end of time. He doesn't double down on the derp, he'll gazillion downs the derp. Welcome to Slashdot!
Whilst we're on the topic, here's an interesting film http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ujx_pND9wg
When you're running neutrino detectors, having operating fission reactors is a major source of noise.
Look at Japan, where the shutdown after Fukushima improved neutrino detection:
http://www.nature.com/news/detectors-zero-in-on-earth-s-heat-1.12707
"A window on the deep Earth opened unexpectedly in 2011, when Japan’s nuclear reactors were shut down after the Fukushima disaster. Before the closure, an underground particle detector called KamLAND based in Kamioka, Japan, was monitoring a torrent of neutrinos streaming from dozens of nearby nuclear reactors, seeking clues to the nature of these hard-to-catch subatomic particles. After those plants fell silent, KamLAND scientists could see more clearly a signal that had largely been obscured: a faint trickle of neutrinos produced inside the planet."
Things will get easier once they've dug up a Zero Point Module
What exactly would be economically viable at the South Pole in the first place?
I'm guessing just about nothing.
They made a movie about this. Low budget but well made: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Gotta power the 2nd Gate somehow... :)
there are no neutrinos. it's just an invention so we can keep using the very convinient "energy conservation" law.
blow up atoms? sure. violate 100'000 old pure ice. sure.
There is plenty of opportunity to load balance rather than change the supply of energy; space heating, water production from ice, water heating. etc would allow for quick immediate load balancing.
Solar panels are more efficient at lower temperatures, due to minor atomic "agitation" in silicon, so it may compensate the minor sun intensity.
All power (whether from green sources or not) will eventually be transformed into heat, increasing the temperature of the Arctic.
This could be a problem on the long term.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
The Belgian South Pole station has been running on wind and solar power for 5 years now ... see http://www.antarcticstation.or... But it's nice to see others are following.
Who Watches the Watchmen?
Already been done. http://www.antarctica.gov.au/l...