11-10-2014, 11:30 AM
LUNAR SOLAR POWER GENERATION
LUNAR SOLAR.docx (Size: 20.89 KB / Downloads: 38)
INTRODUCTION:
Out of all the renewable and non-polluting sources solar power become the most the primary source of commercial power for every one in the world to achieve the same high standard of living. Over the past 200 years the developed nations have vastly increased their creation of per capita income compared to the other nations. In parallel, the developed nations increased the use of commercial thermal power to ~6.9Kwt/person. In fact, most people in the developing nations use much less commercial thermal power and most have little (or) no access to electric power. By the year 2050, people will require at least 20,000 GWe of power. This requires approximately 60,000 GWt of conventional thermal power generation. Such enormous thermal energy consumption will exhaust economical recoverable deposits of coal, shale, oil, natural gas, uranium and thorium. As a result, of conventional systems become useless. Terrestrial renewable systems are always captive to global climate change induced by volcanoes, natural variation in regional climate, industrial haze and possibly even microclimates induced by large area collectors. Over the 21-st century, a global stand -alone system for renewable power would cost thousand of trillions of dollars to build and maintain. Energy costs could consume most of the world's wealth. We need a power system that is independent of earth's biosphere and provides an abundant energy at low cost. To do this man -kind must collect dependable solar power in space and reliably send it to receivers on earth. The MOON is the KEY.
LUNAR SOLAR POWER GENERATION:
Two general concepts have been proposed for delivering solar power to Earth from space. In one, Peter Glaser of Arthur D. Little, Inc. (Cambridge, MA), proposed in 1968 that a huge satellite in geosynchronous orbit around Earth could dependably gather solar power in space. In the second concept figure (1), discussed here, solar power would be collected on the moon. In both ideas, many different beams of 12cm wavelength microwaves would deliver power to receivers at sites located worldwide. Each receiver would supply commercial power to a given region. Such a receiver, called a rectenna, would consist of a large field of small rectifying antennas. A beam with a maximum intensity of less than 20% of noontime sunlight would deliver about 200 W to its local electric grid for every square meter of rectenna area.
Unlike sunlight, microwaves pass through rain, clouds, dust, and smoke. In both scenarios, power can be supplied to the rectenna at night Several thousand individual rectennas strategically located around the globe, with a total area of 100,000 km2, could continuously provide the 20 TW of electric power, or 2 kW per person, required for a prosperous world of 10 billion people in 2050. This surface area is 5% of the surface area that would be needed on Earth to generate 20 TW using the most advanced terrestrial solar-array technology of similar average capacity now envisioned. Rectennas are projected to cost approximately $0.004/kWeoh, which is less than one-tenth of the current cost of most commercial electric energy. This new electric power would be provided without any significant use of Earth's resources several types of solar power satellites have been proposed. They are projected, over 30 years, to deliver approximately 10,000 kWoh of electric energy to Earth for each kilogram of mass in orbit around the planet.
To sell electric energy at $0.01/ kWoh, less than $60 could be expended per kilogram to buy the components of the power satellites, ship them into space, assemble and maintain them, decommission the satellites, and finance all aspects of the space operations. To achieve this margin, launch and fabrication costs would have to be lowered by a factor of 10,000. Power prosperity would require a fleet of approximately 6,000 huge, solar-power satellites. The fleet would have more than 330,000 km2 of solar arrays on-orbit and a mass exceeding 300 million tones. By comparison, the satellite payloads and rocket bodies now in Earth geosynchronous orbit have a collective surface area of about 0.1 km2. The mass launch rate for a fleet of power satellites would have to be 40,000 times that achieved during the Apollo era by both the United States and the Soviet Union. A many decade development program would be required before commercial development could be considered.
PRESENT AND FUTURE POWER SCENARIO:
In 1975 Goeller and Weinberg published a fundamental paper on the relation of commercial power to economic prosperity. They estimated that an advanced economy could provide the full range of Goods and services to its population with 6kWt/person. As technology advances, the goods and services could be provided by ~2 kWe/person of electric power. There will be approximately 10 billion people in 2050.They must be supplied with ~6 kWt/person or ~2 kWe/person in order to achieve energy and economic prosperity. Present world capacity for commercial power must increase by a factor of ~5 by 2050 to 60 kWt or ~20 TWe (T=1012). Output must be maintained indefinitely. Conventional power systems are too expensive for the Developing Nations. Six kilowatts of thermal power now costs ~1,400 $/Y-person. This is ~50% of the average per capita income within the Developing Nations. Other major factors include the limited availability of fossil and nuclear fuels (4,000,000 GWt-Y) and the relatively low economic output from thermal energy (~ 0.25 $/kWt-h). Humans must transition to solar energy during first part of the 21st Century to extend the newly emerging world prosperity. However, solar and wind are intermittent and diffuse. Their energy output is too expensive to collect, store, and dependably distribute
CONCLUSION:
The LUNAR SOLAR POWER (LSP) system will establish a permanent two-planet economy between the earth and the moon. The LSP System is a reasonable alternative to supply earth's needs for commercial energy without the undesirable characteristics of current options. The system can be built on the moon from lunar materials and operated on the moon and on Earth using existing technologies. More-advanced production and operating technologies will significantly reduce up-front and production costs. The energy beamed to Earth is clean, safe, and reliable, and its source-the sun-is virtually inexhaustible.