Designing wind plants for extreme ambient conditions

The paper describes the design process of a wind turbine to be installed in extreme ambient conditions. In particular, a wind plant has been conceived for the very challenging conditions of the French-Italian Antarctic Base, located in the South Pole. Concordia Base has been built with the collaboration of Italian consortium PRNA, French Polar Institute IPEV and European Space Agency ESA. It is one of the three bases not located on the coast and is open all the year. The electrical load of the base, presently supplied by three diesel generators, has been previously characterized measuring the relevant quantities during a period of one year. During the same year an experimental campaign has been conducted to collect the necessary wind data of the site. A model of the wind turbine, previously set up and validated, has been used for the simulation of the plant behaviour. Finally, the possible contribution of the wind energy to the Concordia Antarctic Base supply has been calculated. ©2010 IEEE.