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Africa|Botswana|Construction|Design|Energy|Environment|Financial|Hydropower|Power|PROJECT|Solar|Storage|Sustainable
Africa|Botswana|Construction|Design|Energy|Environment|Financial|Hydropower|Power|PROJECT|Solar|Storage|Sustainable
africa|botswana|construction|design|energy|environment|financial|hydropower|power|project|solar|storage|sustainable

Square Kilometre Array project, Africa and Australia

3rd April 2020

By: Sheila Barradas

Creamer Media Research Coordinator & Senior Deputy Editor

     

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Name of the Project
Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project.

Location
Africa and Australia.

Project Owner/s
The SKA telescope will be co-hosted by South Africa and Australia, with outstations to be established late in other countries. Outstations for the South African core element of the SKA will be in Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia and Zambia. The head office is being hosted by the UK.

Project Description
The SKA will provide a collecting area of one-million square metres, which demands a revolutionary break from traditional radio-telescope design.

The project will use three types of antennas (radio-wave receptors) – dishes, midfrequency aperture arrays and low-frequency aperture arrays – to provide continuous frequency coverage from 70 MHz to 10 GHz. Combining the signals from the antennas will create a telescope with a collecting area equivalent to a dish with an area of about 1 km2.

The first phase of the SKA, known as SKA1, will result in the creation of two complementary instruments, one each in South Africa and Australia.

The South African instrument, known as SKA1_Mid, will comprise about 200 dishes and operate in the 350 MHz to 14 GHz frequency range. The Australian instrument, known as SKA1–Low, will comprise more than 100 000 (perhaps as many as 130 000) dipole antennas and will operate in the 50 MHz to 350 MHz frequency range.

SKA1–Mid will include the 64 dishes of the South African precursor to the SKA, the MeerKAT radio telescope array, being built in the Karoo region. Australia’s precursor, the Australian SKA Pathfinder (better known as Askap and already in operation) will serve as surveying instrument for the SKA.

The central regions, in Australia and in South Africa, will contain cores, each 5 km in diameter – one for each antenna type. Fifty per cent of the collecting area will be within the central cores. The aperture array antennas will extend to about 200 km from the core regions. In Africa, the dishes will be positioned at distant stations that are 3 000 km from the core regions.

The construction of the SKA will be phased.

Phase 1 (SKA1) will comprise about 10% of the array and will include dishes and low-frequency aperture arrays.

The Australian SKA Pathfinder and South Africa’s Meerkat precursor dishes will be incorporated in the SKA1. The Murchison Widefield Array, located at the Australia site, is another precursor telescope to the SKA.

Phase 2 (SKA2) will extend the array with midfrequency aperture arrays and further dishes.

All the dishes for SKA2 will be located in Africa. All the low-frequency aperture arrays will be located in Australia and all the midfrequency aperture arrays will be built in Southern Africa.

The phased construction of the telescope will mean that the SKA can start operating before construction is completed.

Potential Job Creation
More than 1 000 engineers and scientists in 20 countries have been involved in designing the SKA over the past five years, with new research programmes and educational initiatives and collaborations being created in various countries to train the next generation of space scientists and engineers.

Capital Expenditure
SKA1 is expected to cost €650-million (about R8.9-billion).

Planned Start /End Date
Construction of the first phase of the SKA is expected to start in 2021.

SK­A_Mid Phase 1 is expected to be operational by 2028.

Latest Developments
Bertin Energy & Environment, part of the CNIM group, has launched a study into options for the energy supply for the SKA core site in South Africa. This study is receiving financial support from the French government’s Fonds d’études et d’aide au secteur privé, or Private Sector Studies and Assistance Fund. 

This study is the result of an initiative by the National Centre for Scientific Research and the House of SKA France.

The Bertin study is seeking to establish power options for the SKA that are suitable for South Africa, and environment-friendly, safe and sustainable in the long term. 

The aim is to use technological innovations, some of them developed in France, to provide an electricity supply that is technically and economically credible but that does not rely on fossil fuels.

Under consideration are solar energy (thermodynamic and photovoltaic, or PV), wind energy, biomass, hydrogen and hydropower. In addition, the effect of the various energy production and storage technologies on the environment is also being examined. 

The company is giving special attention to a solution involving solar energy technologies integrated with trackers. This would “reduce network extraction in a centralised configuration, that is, with a distribution network providing [power for] all the buildings and antennas,” the company has explained. Also to be studied will be the balancing of PV energy production with daily storage.

“Bertin is also interested in the possibility of independently feeding the antennas furthest from the centre . . . to avoid the costs and losses associated with the distribution network,” it has noted. “It will then be necessary to dimension many mini PV networks with short (battery) and long-term storage . . . for balancing.”

Several French companies form part of a network of companies that have an interest in the project. In addition, the most appropriate financing model for the energy supply project is currently being studied.

Key Contracts and Suppliers
None stated.

On Budget and on Time?
The project is reportedly on course.

Contact Details for Project Information
SKA South Africa, email enquiries@ska.ac.za.
 

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

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