Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 12/29/2007 - 06:56

Good morning Kirk.  Glad to see you are down south!  Hope all is well.  I sent you an email a month or so ago to relay a question from my students about power for weather station transmissions to satellites during the dark months when those solar panels are of little (or no) use.  My kids and I got busy with making contacts around the world and discovered that some stations are equipped with wind turbines for power generation....not dependent upon sunshine for power then.  Our questions are: What do the wind turbines look like and how big are they?  Is it possible to use the same device as the station uses to measure wind speed or are larger blades required for the turbine?  How long do these devices last without maintenance?  Do they have bearings that require lubrication and what kind of lubrication is used in a place as cold as Antarctica? (This last from one of my sons who lives in Alaska.)

Best wishes for a very successful mission.  We will look forward to reading your journal as often as possible.

Barney Peterson

Kirk Beckendorf

Hi Barney,Great questions!!! I had to get some help from Jonathan to answer them. They use solar panels to provide power because it is reliable, simple and their stations need very little power, even though they transmit data every 120 seconds. As you mentioned, some stations are using wind generators but here in Antarctica conditions can be so severe that it causes problems such as the electronics melting because they were spinning so fast and produced too much electrical energy and heat.
Lubricants designed for cold weather are extremely important, but I'm not sure what is used. Once they received an anemometer which did not have a lubricant that was designed for extreme cold and it just froze up.
 They do not use the anemometer to generate power because it needs to be able to spin very freely.
Even though there are many months with no daylight, the batteries that are used provide enough electricity to power data transmission all winter, with plenty of energy left over in the spring.
Thanks for writing. Look forward to hearing from you and your students again.