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July 07, 2007
Solar energy in space to power India
India is working intensely on having a solar power generation station in space to meet the nation’s ever growing energy requirements. The “hyperplane,” which needs to transport the infrastructure into space, will make a demonstrative flight at the 2008 end.
“India’s hypersonic air and space transport activity are now sharp focussed on energy production through space solar power by having solar power stations in orbit. The era of expendable launch vehicles should end and reusable launch vehicles (RLV) are needed”, Defence Research and Development Organisation’s chief controller, R&D, Mr VK Saraswath said.
On how best the scientific community and industry will meet this challenge will be the focus on the two-day conference on hypersonic technology for trans-atmospheric air and space transportation, which will be inaugurated by President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam on Friday.
Mr Saraswath said RLVs are needed to make this mission cost effective. The hypersonic technology demonstrator vehicle (HTDV) is basically a fast transport vehicle into space. DRDO is making the HTDV, while Isro is making the RLV. Interestingly, the scram jets needed for these vehicles to work are currently being tested in Hyderabad.
Former chairman of Bharat Dynamic Ltd Mr Gopalaswamy, who made pioneering work in this field, is widely regarded as a “missionary” for solar energy. “The era of conventional fuels is ending. The sun’s intensity in space is nearly twice what we feel here on the Earth’s surface. On Earth, there is sunlight fit for power generation for six to eight hours a day. In space, it’s 24 hours. We need to have our own solar power station in orbit,” he said.
“Even if one per cent of our nation’s land area is utilised for solar energy, we could have nearly 1,000 giga watts of electric power. Consider this as the projected demand in 2030 is 400 GW and the current consumption is 120 GW,” he said to drive home the need to have solar power station in space. He also gave a possible collaboration scenario. For instance India, Brazil and South Africa have very good relations. They could collaborate on the technologies, infrastructure and expertise.
Posted by Sun at July 7, 2007 04:30 AM
Comments
This brilliant (?) idea has been around for many years. Simple arithmetic definitely shows that “Even if one per cent of our nation’s land area is utilised for solar energy, we could have nearly 1,000 giga watts of electric power”.
The problem is not in setting up a station in space, but in transmitting the power from space to the surface of earth. Instead of wasting resources – man, money and material in developing and testing a vehicle as reported, there is a prior need to investigate the behavior of a column of air through which a microwave beam of hundreds of giga-watts is transmitted. Even a small fraction of this power when absorbed in the atmosphere would definitely heat the air and would lead to considerable turbulence in the column through which the beam is to be transmitted to a receiving station on the ground. Consequently, a considerable fraction of the power would be scattered. The heated column would also have local environmental impact, and the scattered microwaves of such intensity would most likely pose serious health hazards.
Unless these issues are addressed and satisfactorily resolved, we must stop “kite flying” even if it is a “hyperplane”.
Professor Yash Pal Singh
Posted by: Yash Pal Singh at August 23, 2007 04:34 PM