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Powering the moon: Designing a microgrid for future lunar base
- geogra4 4y agoGo Michigan Tech!
- formerkrogemp 4y agoGood old Michigan Tech, where the odds are good but goods are odd.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pauldavis 4y agoGood old <local school>...
- formerkrogemp 4y agoGood old punch cards. Betcha miss those, too, huh from when you learned programming in the 1960s?
- mLuby 4y agoHow can they talk about lunar power without mentioning nuclear? It's dark for 14 days!
- boringg 4y agoThe level of complication to add nuclear to the moon would be an order of magnitude more challenging and very expensive.
- qayxc 4y agoAre you sure about that? Thermo-electric solutions are practically maintenance free, ultra-reliable, and mature technology. Even using a simple Stirling enginelike in NASA's Kilopower [0] project isn't super challenging expensive compared to battery solutions or power relays (e.g. from the lunar south pole or satellites). I see no reason why nuclear power wouldn't be a viable and very competitive (or even essential) part of lunar exploration. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilopower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilopower
- edgyquant 4y agoThey may be talking about political complications
- vorpalhex 4y agoWe use RTGs now in space...
- questiondev 4y agocan they redirect the light beams using solar mirrors that orbit the moon somehow? kinda like a light redirection satellite? technically speaking if there is enough panels and enough wiring to build a grid it could work. the energy would just have to travel via cables once harvested
- SkyMarshal 4y agoI wonder what would be better in that case, redirecting light around to the dark side of the moon, or satellites that collect light, convert it to electricity, then beam it down to the moon as microwaves.
- totetsu 4y agoWell they all also mention wind turbines..
- ceejayoz 4y agohttps://sservi.nasa.gov/articles/selene-data-suggests-no-perpetual-sunlight-on-lunar-poles/ https://sservi.nasa.gov/articles/selene-data-suggests-no-per... > The area with the highest incidence of sunlight was 89% at the north pole, followed by 86% at the south pole, equating to 324 and 314 days of sunlight a year, respectively. There were also many areas around crater rims where the yearly percentage of sunlight was at least 80%. The existence of polar areas believed to be in permanent shadow was confirmed by the survey. They'll be fine with some batteries, and the poles are already prime spots due to permanently shadowed craters holding ice.
- mLuby 4y agoInstalling mission-critical equipment on a peak of eternal light could be risky.
- ceejayoz 4y agoActually, no. (Well, everything on the Moon is risky, to some extent.) Placing it there protects it from the severe temperature swings between 120°C and -130°C you'd get in a day/night cycle. (Or, put solar panels on various redundant high points; different bits of the poles get their 80% at different times. Run cables to the base.)
- mLuby 4y agoGood point about the temp swings. I just meant physically moving and installing the equipment plus running cables from the flat landing site up the slope.
- boringg 4y agoTheir line losses would be pretty low considering the temperatures!
- BurningFrog 4y agoI assume the Moon gets quite hot during the 14 day, uh, day? It's as close to the sun as Earth, with no isolating cloud layer. Then again there is no greenhouse effect, so maybe pure intuition won't figure this out.
- boringg 4y agoTalk about not thinking through my comment before posting it. ~ 106 C during the day oof thats hot. Line losses would be great at night however during peak solar production you probably need some kind of protection for the cabling (good thing its a short distance). Having to plan the componentry for sure wild temperature swings - yikes.
- qayxc 4y agoWouldn't it be sufficient to just use a simple sun shade? There's no atmosphere that could transfer the heat so my naive assumption would be that a simple sun shade would do the trick.
- formerkrogemp 4y agoThe moon's modified USB-C will be known as Luna-C.
- euroderf 4y agoOne side of the connector will be permanently out of sight.
- malchow 4y agoFor anyone wanting to work on problems like these at commercial scale, check out Enphase[1]. We build real AC microgrids that perform realtime energy production and consumption calculations to enable true microgrid orchestration with or without the presence of the utility. [1] https://enphase.com https://enphase.com
- wccrawford 4y agoI wish your site would list the local installers, instead of just demanding my phone number to hand out to 4 random installers that I can't research ahead of time.
- malchow 4y agoThat's hard to do without enabling the massive industry of low-brow leadgen companies to scrape data and make the spam problem even worse. But I hear you. I will look at it.
- jbm 4y agoI'm going to be using your microinverters for my solar setup for that specific reason. (Finding an installer that knew about them was pretty hard though)
- mcronce 4y agoI have nothing to add, but I'm using IQ7+s on the roof. It's grid-tied, but they've consistently worked great, and Enlighten's API is shockingly (pun intended) nice to use.
- malchow 4y agoThanks. If you ever have thoughts on how to improve/grow the API, email me. jm [at] hnvr.com
- mcronce 4y agoWhen last I checked (and contacted support :)), there was no way to get per-panel generation data from the API. It's been, like, at least a year, but if it hasn't already been added, that'd be a thing I'd love to see so I can integrate it with the monitoring/alerting I already have setup. Since per-panel data is available in the UI, it seems like information that Enlighten does track, it's just not made available via API.
- spoiler 4y agoI didn't read the whole thing (and my planetary physics is pretty basic), but how would one protect infrastructure from getting struck by small bodies (asteroids I guess?)? Or are they a much rarer occurrence than I thought (I'm basing this off the fact that the moon is famously full of craters, and we were taught that in school that the moon "protects" earth)!
- mcmisieck 4y ago"Moon", "Earth" not "moon", "the moon", "earth" ;)
- jbay808 4y agoIn 1969, Neil Armstrong landed on Moon?
- stewjacks 4y agoI remember reading a (not so tongue in cheek) proposal for powering the moon on diesel. The justification was how complicated solar and storage would be given our current state of the art. Does anyone know the blog post I’m talking about? I can’t find it
- Arrath 4y agoMy kneejerk reaction is that it doesn't seem wise to run your previous breathing gas through an ICE but surely its not as boneheaded as it seems at first glance?
- mgsouth 4y agoI've wondered how heavy construction equipment would work. Bulldozers trailing thick power cables seems... problematic. Yes, I'm aware of huge draglines connected to power sources with cables, but they aren't very mobile and you don't need to worry about other equipment cutting the line. Don't think batteries would do, either. So, ICE with compressed oxygen?
- perilunar 4y agoI would think the weight of batteries would be helpful in the case of bulldozers, especially given the low g.
- perilunar 4y agoWell there's likely to be surplus rocket fuel available, either RP-1 (kerosene), methane, or liquid hydrogen, and LOX, so burning some in an (non-rocket) internal combustion engine is not so crazy. Fuel cells would be more efficient though.