what happens when Solar Space Power satellite experience some kind of solar eclipse?
by admin on Thursday, December 2nd, 2010 | 4 Comments
Since the SPS systems are designed for 24 hours power supply what happens to the power transmission at the time of an eclipse?
I would imagine they have a battery or back-up of some sort. Even if they’re designed to have sun 24/7, they’d probably still have the backup just in case something were to happen.
They experience more or less ‘eclipses’ every day as they orbit the Earth, and as they go around the side of the Earth that is not lit up by the Sun they simply lose gaining any solar energy for a few minutes until they have revolved back into the suns light again.
Either way, a solar eclipse does not last that long so the satellites would have plenty of energy left to use.
They would go onto battery power when they are in eclipse if necessary. You do realize that there are no SPS satellites in orbit yet, don’t you?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power
Battery backup! You dont think they would send a multi-million dollar satellite up without it do you?