A large wind-farm (900kW) was commissioned at the Mawson research station in Antarctica in 2003. The design of the wind-farm was over-sized to allow the future use of storage technology to increase the overall renewable energy penetration of the station's energy requirements. Prior to the wind-farm installation, around 600,000 litres of diesel was consumed annually to provide heat and power at Mawson. Later in 2003, the Australian Government, through the Australian Greenhouse Office made a grant of A$0.5M to the Australian Antarctic Division to demonstrate the use of hydrogen, generated from wind as an energy carrier and energy source, for use in future Antarctic operations.

A generation and storage system was installed in 2005/2006 and in 2007, hydrogen powered end-user systems were installed. The various appliances, vehicles and fuel cell were installed to test the feasibilty and discover the pit-falls of integrating hydrogen into the energy equation of a small remote community located in a hostile environment. For instance, the fuel cell was developed in Sweden for start/stop operation at -30 degrees C.

This paper concentrates on the issues and pit-falls of the project and its ultimate "failure" due to a lack of commitment and vision at the bureaucratic level. The main issues revolved around safety, and the usual perceptions surrounding the Hindenburg accident. It was compounded by a general lack of written design and safety standards. This presentation draws upon the lessons learnt to recommend ways forward for the introduction of the hydrogen economy, particularly at the community level.