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Microwave power transmission on the lunar surface
Assuming a lunar settlement uses solar power for all their energy
needs, the biggest problem is how to store power during the 328 hour lunar night. If the solar panel 'farm' supporting the settlement were split into three farms, evenly spaced around the circumference of the moon, total power production would be relatively constant. This would require greater production of solar cells than a single farm would use but would eliminate the need to store energy for 14 days. Since the cost to build and send the solar cell manufacturing system to the Moon would probably far outweigh the operating costs, I expect even doubling the total number of solar cells would be cheaper than building and shipping a separate energy storage system to the Moon. Rather than running cable around the Moon, would it be possible to design wave-guides to carry the power efficiently as microwaves over the 1000s of km between solar farms? How many would be needed and how large might they need to be? |
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Microwave power transmission on the lunar surface
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Microwave power transmission on the lunar surface
wrote in message oups.com... Assuming a lunar settlement uses solar power for all their energy needs, the biggest problem is how to store power during the 328 hour lunar night. If the solar panel 'farm' supporting the settlement were split into three farms, evenly spaced around the circumference of the moon, total power production would be relatively constant. This would require greater production of solar cells than a single farm would use but would eliminate the need to store energy for 14 days. Since the cost to build and send the solar cell manufacturing system to the Moon would probably far outweigh the operating costs, I expect even doubling the total number of solar cells would be cheaper than building and shipping a separate energy storage system to the Moon. Rather than running cable around the Moon, would it be possible to design wave-guides to carry the power efficiently as microwaves over the 1000s of km between solar farms? How many would be needed and how large might they need to be? Well, if we are building them on Earth and sending them up in rockets, and their quite remote from the lunar settlement, and using microwave beam transmission, then probably we should put them into lunar orbit and use the long lines of sight that gives to beam them to a few receiving stations close to the settlement. This would work particularly well if the settlement was at a lunar pole, which is a common scenario. |
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Microwave power transmission on the lunar surface
Why not put the power sat at L1, and microwave or laser the power to
where it's needed? I think waveguides need to be either far above the horizon, or very numerous. But I think cable could well be economical, espeically if manufactured in-situ. |
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Microwave power transmission on the lunar surface
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Microwave power transmission on the lunar surface
The simplicity of a waveguide is why I proposed using microwaves in the
first place. As for conversion efficiency, I think that 90% overall efficiency of electricitymicrowaveselectricity has been demonstrated. I'm betting that the mass of aluminum needed for waveguides would be a lot less than for cable. Also, the lunar landscape is not a nice flat table; stringing cable over mountains and ravines over 1000s of kilometers could be a lot more dangerous and difficult than flying a ship to a few dozen spots to set up waveguides. But this whole idea hangs on how large the waveguides would have to be and how widely spaced they could be (assume they'd be atop reasonable-sized towers or convenient mountains). Can any EEs provide some numbers for waveguide size and spacing requirements? |
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Microwave power transmission on the lunar surface
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