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Model-III demonstrator being built at Lycée Jean Perrin

The Lycee, a kind of a mix of senior high-school and junior college, features specialized professional electronics sections, hence the name of Jean Perrin, one of the leading French scientists of the first part of the twentieth century, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1926 for his work on the discontinuity of matter.

After the WPT-01 workshop held in La Réunion in May 2001, a group of about 15 teachers of Lycée Jean Perrin, coordinated by the deputy head-master of the Lycée, has undertaken to prepare a major school project for the academic year 2002-2003, involving various disciplines, to organize students into a "school company" with the purpose to conceive third generation SPS portable system demonstrators, based on the existing model-2 design built in cooperation by ISAS and CNES in 1999.

Students in the mechanical section will redesign and build the structures and the carrying case. The students working in the electromechanical section will redesign and build the Sun simulator, the photovoltaic array and the Earth display. Those in the electronics section will redesign and build the power conditioning unit and also build the microwave section according to the design already developed at ISAS. The system will be tested with the help of the WPT research group of the University of La Réunion. In parallel, the French language teachers will help the students write up a set of directions for use of the model, as well as a set of related documents to present the principles of Wireless Power Transportation and the basics of Space Solar Power systems, while the English teachers will help them prepare the international version.

Students in the business sections of the Lycée will perform several tasks : they will make a world-wide market survey for the distribution of the models, they will investigate precisely the elements that will contribute to the formation of the price of the demonstrator, estimated between 2.000 and 3.000 USD from the first calculations, and eventually they will handle international sales.

A promotional FOB price of 2.000 USD has been already set for subscription customers, exclusive of delivery costs.

Contact for Lycée Jean Perrin : tesfjperrin@netcourrier.com

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