TEXT BOX: The first Australian solar farm in Antarctica has been switched on at Casey research station.

MARK PEKIN — INFRASTRUCTURE ENGINEER. We’re installing some solar panels, primarily to help with the power on station and reduce the amount of diesel that we burn.

TEXT BOX: 105 solar panels are mounted on the northern wall of the station’s store.

TEXT BOX: They provide 30 kilowatts of renewable energy into the station’s power grid.

MARK PEKIN: Back in the real world the sun typically goes overhead. Down here at the very low latitudes in the southern hemisphere, the sun typically doesn’t get much above the horizon, so the wall of the building gets more sunshine than the roof of the building.

It’s certainly a lot windier down here than what you’d find when normal solar panels are installed. And that’s another value of having it on the wall. It’s quite snug in there. And the panels are designed for some fairly serious wind loads.

DOREEN McCURDY — ENGINEERING SERVICES SUPERVISOR: Temperature is a big thing as well. The guys are having to do really fiddly little screws and nuts and when their hands are cold they need to take breaks and put their hands in pockets with pocket warmers to warm up.

Each panel takes about 20 minutes to install. When we have cold or really windy days the guys come inside and pull cables or install cable trays.

TEXT BOX: The panels will help cut fuel costs and emissions and boost the station’s capacity at peak times.

MARK PEKIN: There are no doubt some learnings that we’ll get for this and we’ll look at what that can do for some of our other stations as well.

Masdar credit: This project was made possible by Masdar (Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company), a global leader in the commercialisation and deployment of renewable energy and clean technologies in more than 25 countries around the world to address global sustainability challenges.