Photovoltaic power generation on the moon: Problems and prospects

Abstract

Introduction: Photovoltaic power is important for the current and future Lunar space missions. Alternating fortnights of bright sunshine offers a clean and unlimited energy resource on the Moon. Apollo (Bates and Fang 2001) and Lunokhod (Torchynska and Polupan 2002) missions conducted earliest solar cell experiments on the lunar surface during the 1970's. Space solar cell technology has significantly evolved during these forty years (Markvart and Castner 2003; Partain and Fraas 2010). Keeping in mind the recent renewed interest in lunar studies (Sridharan et al. 2010) the advantages and disadvantages of photovoltaic power generation on the Moon will be discussed in this chapter which is a modified version of our earlier paper (Girish and Aranya 2010).