SKA Power - an international project to build the world's largest telescope over an area of 7 million square kilometres

The SKA is a 1,500 million Euro international project to build the largest and most sensitive radio telescope in the world. Astronomers, engineers, industry partners and governments from 20 countries are involved in the planning and design of the SKA which will be built in either Southern Africa or Australia/New Zealand. The SKA will be made of thousands of antennas linked together across an area the size of a continent, presenting a complex distributed power supply challenge. The SKA power system design requirements are discussed, including the potential utilisation of renewable energy sources, EMI and RFI mitigation, and the logistical considerations of a remote desert environment, all of which may require viable alternatives to established power engineering processes.