Power budget analysis for high altitude airships

Sang H. Choi; James R. Elliott; Glen C. King

doi:10.1117/12.663586

26 May 2006 Power budget analysis for high altitude airships

Sang H. Choi, James R. Elliott, Glen C. King

Proceedings Volume 6219, Enabling Technologies and Design of Nonlethal Weapons; 62190C (2006) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.663586
Event: Defense and Security Symposium, 2006, Orlando (Kissimmee), Florida, United States

Abstract

The High Altitude Airship (HAA) has various potential applications and mission scenarios that require onboard energy harvesting and power distribution systems. The energy source considered for the HAA's power budget is solar photon energy that allows the use of either photovoltaic (PV) cells or advanced thermoelectric (ATE) converters. Both PV cells and an ATE system utilizing high performance thermoelectric materials were briefly compared to identify the advantages of ATE for HAA applications in this study. The ATE can generate a higher quantity of harvested energy than PV cells by utilizing the cascaded efficiency of a three-staged ATE in a tandem mode configuration. Assuming that each stage of ATE material has the figure of merit of 5, the cascaded efficiency of a three-staged ATE system approaches the overall conversion efficiency greater than 60%. Based on this estimated efficiency, the configuration of a HAA and the power utility modules are defined.

Citation Download Citation

Sang H. Choi, James R. Elliott, and Glen C. King "Power budget analysis for high altitude airships", Proc. SPIE 6219, Enabling Technologies and Design of Nonlethal Weapons, 62190C (26 May 2006); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.663586

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