Moore, I. , Celik, O. , Sulbhewar, L. and McInnes, C. R. (2023) The Effects of Pointing Error Sources on Energy Delivery from Orbiting Solar Reflectors. In: 74th International Astronautical Congress (IAC), Baku, Azerbaijan, 2-6 Oct 2023, (Accepted for Publication)
![[img]](https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/style/images/fileicons/text.png) |
Text
309048.pdf - Accepted Version Restricted to Repository staff only Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. 1MB |
Abstract
Many proposals are being made for cleaner, more sustainable forms of energy production. Terrestrial solar photovoltaic farms (SPFs) could potentially deliver large quantities of energy to the grid, although these are limited to daytime use. The output from these SPFs could be enhanced, particularly around dawn and dusk, by the use of orbiting solar reflectors (OSRs) in near-polar orbit. These would reflect an image of the solar disk, or solar image (SI), onto the SPFs to augment their energy output. Pointing requirements are therefore to ensure that reflected sunlight is delivered to the terrestrial SPF, avoiding the losses incurred by an offset of the SI and the SPF itself. The SI would typically be of order 10 km for a reflector in a 1000 km orbit. Given the potentially large size of the reflectors, this presents a challenge for the attitude determination and control system (ADCS) to ensure that the maximum quantity of energy can be delivered to a SPF, typically requiring large control moment gyro actuators. In addition, there exist numerous sources of error in the ADCS which can cause further degradation in the quantity of energy delivered to the SPF. These errors can manifest in the resolution of the various sensors, flexible structural modes, manufacturing inaccuracies, and misalignments due to vibration during launch. This paper will investigate the effects of pointing error sources on the reflector ADCS and so on the quantity of energy delivered to the SPF. With the application of a PD controller with feedforward compensation, and the set of noise characteristics defined in this paper, numerical simulations will show the typical losses in energy delivered to SPFs of 37.50% when the model accounts for pointing error sources in onboard sensors, actuator uncertainty and flexible structural modes. Improvements in sensor noise characteristics, as well as application of a more robust controller, could improve upon this result.
| Item Type: | Conference Proceedings |
|---|---|
| Status: | Accepted for Publication |
| Refereed: | Yes |
| Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: | Moore, Mr Iain and McInnes, Professor Colin and Sulbhewar, Dr Litesh and Celik, Dr Onur |
| Authors: | Moore, I., Celik, O., Sulbhewar, L., and McInnes, C. R. |
| College/School: | College of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering > Systems Power and Energy |
| Copyright Holders: | Copyright © 2023 The Authors |
| Publisher Policy: | Reproduced under a Creative Commons licence |
University Staff: Request a correction | Enlighten Editors: Update this record
Funder and Project Information
Funder and Project Information