I was watching a documentary on TV about the moon and I was impressed with the plans or project drafs they have for the moon.
One of the things that caught my eye was Lunar Solar Power. This is not anything new, but I just became aware of it.
Everyone knows that the consumption of electrical power is on the rise and unless we find a viable alternative solution to fossil fuels, we will ultimately run out of it.
The solution presented was Lunar Solar Power. Why? Because the moon has excellent conditions for Solar Power. The idea would be to install Solar panels on the moon, and transmit the collected power to earth through microwaves 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. Unlike sunlight, microwaves pass through rain, clouds, dust, and smoke. Power can be supplied to the rectenna at night Several thousand individual rectennas strategically located around the globe.
To enrich your knowledge about this you can start reading the following paper:
– Lunar Solar Power Generation
I love solar power I think over the next few years it’s going to be exploding even more… as performance of solar panels goes up people are going to be adopting it everywhere they can… after all it’s free energy 🙂 BTW here is more solar power information -> Solar Power
I agree with you Bart, but the thing about Lunar Solar Power is that it wouldn’t depend on the weather, you can get much more sunlight there.
The cost for hosting electricity in batteries is very high and with consecutive rainy days you have no solar power.
What I heard is that the cost for starting something like this is the same as the budget that the US spends on defense in one year, and the area needed for the antennas on earth is less that the area used to produce electricity from coal.
This is all great stuff but what are the political implications? For instance we can’t get a political consensus on global warming, sharing of wealth, feeding the hungry, banishing wars etc, what chance of a consensus on this! Who provides the capital? The paymaster will want to be first in line for the benefits, the poorer countries will be last in line, if at all. If America pays, her allies will be looked after but States not in favour will not. (the same rules would also apply if some other country(s) provided the capital). For this to work we would need to make a lot of progress in world harmony.