It might be possible to use renewable energy resources. The prevailing east wind drift provides abundant (sometimes overabundant!) wind power. In the McMurdo Sound area it might be possible to use geothermal energy - though in the Antarctic winter. Space based solar power plants have been discussed by many authors, among them, Harry Tabor. Such a plant might consist of a few square kilometers of photovoltaic cells powering a microwave transmitter which wold send energy to the ground. Down on Earth, a receiving station would convert the microwaves into a useful form of energy. The very high costs involved in building such a plant would seem to relegate it to the distant future. However, the large value of a non-polluting source of energy in the Antarctic, coupled with the relatively low power demands there, might make a pilot plant built to supply electricity to an Antarctic research station economically feasible. As usually proposed, a space solar power plant would be placed in a geostationary orbit 36,000 km above the Earth's equator. A receiving station must be north of 81.3° latitude or the satellite would be below the horizon to it. Large areas of the Antarctic are substantially above this latitude, which would make the transmitting antenna appear higher in the sky at these sites. The figure shows the circles where an appropriately placed geostationary satellite appears 0, 5 and 10° above the horizon in Antarctica. REFERENCES [1] Isakson, P. (personal communication) [2] Tabor, H. (1987) Proc 2nd Int. Conf, on Applied Optics in Solar Energy, Prague, Czechoslovakia.
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