Space-enhanced terrestrial solar power for equatorial regions

This Paper investigates the concept of solar mirrors in an Earth orbit to provide large-scale terrestrial equatorial solar farms with additional solar power during the hours of darkness. A flower constellation of mirrors is considered in highly eccentric orbits (semimajor axis=20,270.4  km) in order to increase the time of visibility over the solar farms, and through this architecture, only two mirrors are needed to provide complete night coverage over three equatorial locations. Selecting the proper value for the orbit eccentricity, solar radiation pressure and Earth’s oblateness perturbations act on the mirrors so that the apsidal motion of the orbit due to these perturbations is synchronized with the apparent motion of the sun. Therefore, it can be guaranteed that the perigee always points toward the sun and that the mirrors orbit mostly above the night side of the Earth. With respect to geostationary orbit, the family of orbits considered in this Paper allows a passive means to overcome issues related to orbital perturbations. Moreover, because of the large slant range from geostationary orbits, a larger mirror is required to deliver the same energy that could be delivered from a lower orbit with a smaller mirror. As a result, a single antiheliotropic flower constellation composed of two mirrors of 50  km2 would be able to deliver energy in the range of 4.60–5.20 GW·h per day to 1000  km3 solar farms on the equator. Finally, it is estimated that, deploying 90 of these constellations, the price of electricity could be reduced from 9.1 cents to 6 cents per kW⋅h

Multiple input control strategies for robust and adaptive climate engineering in a low order 3-box model

A low-order 3-box energy balance model for the climate system is employed with a multivariable control scheme for the evaluation of new robust and adaptive climate engineering strategies using solar radiation management. The climate engineering measures are deployed in three boxes thus representing northern, southern and central bands. It is shown that, through heat transport between the boxes, it is possible to effect a degree of latitudinal control through the reduction of insolation. The approach employed consists of a closed-loop system with an adaptive controller, where the required control intervention is estimated under the RCP4.5 radiative scenario. Through the online estimation of the controller parameters, adaptive control can overcome key issues related to uncertainties of the climate model, the external radiative forcing and the dynamics of the actuator used. In fact, the use of adaptive control offers a robust means of dealing with unforeseeable abrupt perturbations, as well as the parametrization of the model considered, to counteract the RCP4.5 scenario, while still providing bounds on stability and control performance. Moreover, applying multivariable control theory also allows the formal controllability and observability of the system to be investigated in order to identify all feasible control strategies

Analytical study of coherence in seeded modulation instability

We derive analytical expressions for the coherence in the onset of modulation instability, in excellent agreement with thorough numerical simulations. As usual, we start by a linear perturbation analysis, where broadband noise is added to a continuous wave (CW) pump; then, we investigate the effect of adding a deterministic seed to the CW pump, a case of singular interest as it is commonly encountered in parametric amplification schemes. Results for the dependence of coherence on parameters such as fiber type, pump power, propagated distance, seed signal-to-noise ratio are presented. Finally, we show the importance of including higher-order linear and nonlinear dispersion when dealing with generation in longer wavelength regions (mid IR). We believe these results to be of relevance when applied to the analysis of the coherence properties of supercontinua generated from CW pumps.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figure