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Space Based Solar Power Within a Decade?
Posted by
samzenpus
on Fri Feb 20, 2009 01:02 AM
from the start-your-water-engines dept.
from the start-your-water-engines dept.
Nancy Atkinson writes "A new company, Space Energy, Inc., says they have developed what they call a 'rock-solid business platform' and they should be able to provide commercially available space based solar power within a decade. 'Although it's a very grandiose vision, it makes total sense,' Space Energy's Peter Sage told Universe Today. 'We're focused on the fact that this is an inevitable technology and someone is going to do it. Right now we're the best shot. We're also focused on the fact that, according to every scenario we've analyzed, the world needs space based solar power, and it needs it soon, as well as the up-scaling of just about every other source of renewable energy that we can get our hands on.'"
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Submission: Space Based Solar Power Within a Decade? by Anonymous Coward
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Yep (Score:4, Insightful)
The downside is that importing energy from space upsets Earth's balance - but hopefully the new energy can be used to help remove some of the uneeded, less useful energy (atmospheric thermal energy, I'm looking at you).
But the potential is enormous. Coating the sunny side of the moon with solar arrays would provide something like 20 TW of power if I recall correctly - several times the total energy consumption of the Earth today.
Re: (Score:3)
The downside is that importing energy from space upsets Earth's balance
My thoughts exactly. Solar power that wouldn't normally hit Earth redirected towards Earth? Global Warming!
Tiny effect (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Tiny effect (Score:5, Funny)
If we position it right, we can make the earth a huge solar sail and push ourselves out to an orbit that will negate the heat trapped by greenhouse gases!
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Re:Tiny effect (Score:5, Funny)
Is that you Professor Farnsworth?
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Re:Tiny effect (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting. When was the last time you used your microwave to make hot air? The hot air around a hot cup of tea doesn't count... that's heat from steam.
Having said that, I still think it's a bad idea. Who is going to aim the thing, what guarantees are there against bad aim, and who is going to be liable if 100,000 people get irradiated with low-power microwaves?
Just wanna know. That's all.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You do realize that microwaves don't have any effect besides heating water (and other bipolar molecules) and causing sparks to fly off metal (which is how the energy gets collected)? They aren't scary nuclear radiation, they just make you uncomfortably hot. Make the beam wide enough and it won't hurt anyone or anything.
Re:Tiny effect (Score:5, Insightful)
But if you make the beam "wide enough", as you describe, it is also not practical because it takes up far too much area (far, far too expensive). If you want to make it practical, you will have to beam it at a concentration that you definitely don't want pointed at your kitchen.
I understand the difference between microwave radiation and, say, ionizing radiation. But sufficient concentration of either one will kill you, albeit in much different ways. And, as I was saying before: if you want to collect energy over a given area, and make it efficient, it has to be a significant amount of energy. Nobody is going to build a single receiver the size of New Mexico.
So I get it, okay? But even though I know my new microwave is 1200W (and I even know what that means), that doesn't mean I won't find you in your office and shoot your ass if your satellite regularly aims 50mW at my kids.
That's clear enough, isn't it?
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
... and steam is composed of what ?
That's right, water vapour ! And what are those white fluffy things in the sky ? Ding ding ding ! Clouds made of water vapour. So heating the clouds produces a change in the local weather patterns, and as we all know, local weather is part of global weather.
This seems like a great way to start a hurricane.
Re:Tiny effect (Score:5, Funny)
who is going to be liable if 100,000 people get irradiated with low-power microwaves?
I can see it now... A bag of microwave popcorn will be the canary of the 21st century:
Oh my god Ellie Mae! The Bag's poppin'! Get the kids indoors and make sure they got their tin foil outfits on!
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Re:Tiny effect (Score:5, Funny)
who is going to be liable if 100,000 people get irradiated with low-power microwaves?
Oh, I know! Motorola and Nokia, right?
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Re:Yep (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Yep (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Green (Score:5, Insightful)
And the parent comment is NOT a troll. The environmentalists will say we don't understand the effects of transmitting concentrated high-power microwave beams from space down through the upper atmosphere to the earth's surface.
Will it affect migrating birds? Plants and wildlife in the area? Disrupt weather patterns? Cause unforeseen chemical reactions in the upper atmosphere?
And the sad part is that they're right. We probably don't know all of the consequences...
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Re:Green (Score:5, Insightful)
The parent comment IS A TROLL . Look up the definition of trolling. I think you are getting "confused" since the troll stated something moderately insightful (if not obvious) that there would probably be demands from some environmentalists to conduct some sort of environmental impact study. Clearly you agree that environmentalists would make such demands and that the troll was merely stating an unpopular opinion/position and was moderated unfairly. However, what else did he/she say?
Firstly, he/she is comparing all environmentalists to members of Greenpeace. Secondly, he/she makes disparaging statements about Greenpeace. That was about 2/3rds of the troll's post. Labeling all people opposed to the technology, then making a comment about the difficulty(or unreasonable nature) of the impact study, and finally accusing a specific group of shortsightedness and obstinate attitudes towards progress.
Nothing productive was accomplished in that post and it only served to defame a particular group of people and their agenda. The only supportive comment was made in support of the derogatory comments themselves. The whole tone and purpose of the article was provocative while providing no clear positions or arguments. That is, by definition, trolling.
For full disclosure here, I am not a member of Greenpeace or any PAC with environmentalist agendas either.
Also, I don't understand opposition to environmental impact studies. It's shortsighted to have a manifest destiny approach to everything we do. Does it give us a little convenience and pleasure? Fine. Then "fuck all the little animals cuz i'm human and they were put here for me". Progress does not have to occur at any cost. Sure, the planet may seem big to many people. However, we are finding out rather quickly that our actions ARE changing the environments and animal and plant life that we cohabit with. I'm not talking about Global Warming either. Just making the simple statement that our actions have consequences and it would be prudent to understand them to the best of our ability before proceeding.
That's why I like the movie Rapa Nui, which is about the events on Easter Island. They ended up killing themselves and their local environment by their actions. If they had the sophistication to conduct and environmental impact study they would have quickly found out their actions were suicidal. Which is why these environmental impact studies are conducted (in my mind at least) to assess what damage we may do the environment in order to properly weigh the benefits versus the risks to not only the environment, but us as well . If it's just too damaging to the environment and we run the risk of endangering a species than it had better be pretty damn important. I want to know that it is something that will allow us to make positive progress. The comment about the eagle getting whacked is ridiculous. I don't think anyone is opposed to the renewable energy produced because of the possibility of a bird flying into the turbine. After all, the renewable energy itself is about sustainability and pollution free energy production which only benefits the environment anyways.
Lastly, we can never know all the consequences of anything. We are just not that sophisticated yet. Personally, I just want to know that all the little squirrels are not going to grow huge tumors on their nuts. It's not that much of a leap to conclude that tumors will grow on MY NUTS TOO.
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I LOVE stories like this (Score:5, Insightful)
It puts a smile in my heart because, at the end of the day, if we have enough extra resources in this country that we can afford to put them into such a ridiculous scheme, then the recession still isn't nearly as bad as it could be.
Awesome. Props to those salesmen.
Re:I LOVE stories like this (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
50 tons of gold would be worth approx. $1,558,720,000
Cost of 1 shuttle launch $450,000,000
Ok so some math here, let me see carry the 1...
Ok that leaves us with a measly $1,108,720,000 ok your right fuck that idea, thats not worth it at all... hehe
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Gold (like any other precious commodity) is worth exactly how much people are willing to pay for it. And the reason they pay so much is precisely because it is precious i.e. there is a limited quantity of it going around.
You start bringing back 50 tons at a time (and making a tidy 1 billion profit), and you'll see that the price of gold drops through the floor and it would quickly become as worthless as oil currently is.
So no it probably ISN'T commercially viable, at least once the gold buyers figure out wh
MODS (Score:5, Insightful)
This project is an orbiting white elephant that would take an enourmous amount of energy to build, would supply only a tiny fraction of what we need at a ridiculously high cost per watt, and could easily be percieved as a space based weapon by other nations. If I didn't know better I would have to assume TFA is a lame attempt to discredit the viability of earth bound renewables.
Here is the sales pitch on costs: "The biggest challenge for SBSP is making it work on a commercial level in terms of bottom line," said Sage, "i.e., putting together a business case that would allow the enormous infrastructure costs to be raised, the plan implemented, and then electricity sold at a price that is reasonable. I say 'reasonable' and not just 'competitive' because we're getting into a time where selling energy only on a price basis isn't going to be the criteria for purchase.
This is total bullshit, cost is the ONLY criteria for commercial electricity generation, the fact that the costs to the environment are not accounted for in our current economic system is the problem.
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MOD PARENT UP!! (Score:4, Insightful)
100% agreed, and there's no way that the launch costs are going to drop by the 3 orders of magnitude required to make this viable. I presume that his is an effort to extract "stimulus" money while the extracting is good, then fail later out. Someone will end up a millionaire and nobody is going to get any damn space power.
Brett
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Obvious by it's absence (Score:4, Informative)
Notably they fail to mention what is expected to be the long pole in the tent - launch costs. Even if Musk and SpaceX succeed, launch costs will still be at least an order of magnitude higher than what is estimated will be required for commercial success of space based power plants.
Feasible, but practical? (Score:3, Insightful)
Whenever I see space-based solar power I never believe its economically viable. Based on that quote, they recognize that its not viable in the current market, and that average energy costs would have to increase by a factor of 15 to 20 times in order to make it viable. They think that the trends in energy cost are going to go that way. Somehow, I think as energy costs increase we'll get more creative on the ground, expanding ground based solar power, wind, nuclear, geo-thermal, etc., improving efficiency and developing new technologies to bring those costs back down.
As others have pointed out, launch costs are the critical, incredibly expensive aspect. In order to make it practical, we need to drastically reduce the access cost for space, by at least an order of magnitude. None of SpaceX's most optimistic estimates, or anyone elses, make it more viable.
However, there is a practical path for development of SBSP in military applications. A few satellites and some trucks with microwave receivers on the back are very appealing when compared with the current method for generating battlefield power: supply lines hauling in diesel fuel to power good old-fashioned generators. SBSP has great tactical advantages, and may actually be comparable in cost as well. From here, we may very well see it gain civilian applications as well.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I noticed that too. In particular, the comment about shipping energy around the national (and, conceivably, international) grids.
I suppose one advantage of SBSP is that the aim on the satellite transmitters could be adjusted to one of several ground receiving stations, which would allow the power to travel over smaller distances on the grid. Whether this could actually make up for inverse square losses due to longer transmission paths, I don't know. Still, it's an interesting advantage to SBSP that I hadn't
Nuclear, please. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is silly. Putting solar panels in orbit? Please.
Use the money to build nuclear plants. Don't bore me with the waste issue. There is no such thing as waste, just more fuel. [theoildrum.com]
Other benefits (Score:3, Insightful)
Other benefits might include transmitting the power to remote locations where generation or transmittal is otherwise difficult (Antarctica for example), and more efficient power distribution on the power grid. If the power could be transmitted to different sites without significant loss, I^2xR losses in power lines across the grid could be minimized. Of note would be peak hours, and sunrise/sundown. I'm not sure what the power usage graphs look like, but I'm assuming there's enough fluctuation that it would be useful to shift power as the time of day changed.
Military applications (Score:4, Informative)
To deliver power to a certain places in Iraq and Afghanistan it costs well over $1USD/kWh, not mention the loss of human life.
The pentagon is seriously considering SBSP as a viable way to deliver power to not only these locations, but other places of humanitarian interest.
The technology to deliver and deploy SBSP payloads (for it will take many deployments) already exist. Improvements will undoubtedly be made, and with the hopeful completion of NASA's Ares V [nasa.gov] cargo launch vehicle SBSP will be economical for the rest of us. (under 20cents(USD)/kWh.)
As for the microwave radiation concern, it is not as scary as commonly depicted. (Can anyone recall the tale of the discovery of microwave radiation as a cooking tool--something to do with a Snickers bar melting in a pocket? [Who the heck carries a Snickers bar in their pocket?]) If the size of the receiving antenna is increased, the power of the transmitted signal may be decreased on a W/m scale. With a transmitter that can 'dither' the signal over a rather wide swath one can abate errors associated with tracking, solar anomalies and human error.
Military applications, however, are not quite as concerned with stray microwave beams.
Do not forget that SBSP is exposed to the sun for 24 hours--no interruptions!
On another note the Japanese are working on developing devices that may convert solar energy to transmittable energy in upwards of 40% efficiency by converting solar power to laser. [treehugger.com]
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Even if it's only for a minute or so and there are no sharks involved, I'm sure the military will still find a use for it
Economical? How? (Score:3, Insightful)
Am I the only one who doesn't quite see how they intend to make this profitable?
I assume they're planning on geosynchronous orbit (the article mentions they are), since anything else will mean intermittent power and moving collectors. In that case, the typical launch cost is $20,000/kg, and the there are serious total weight restrictions per launch. Solar cells come in two varieties: Heavy and inefficient. Trucking and installation costs of solar cells here on Earth are what, $200/kg, if that?
The big advantage? Something like 3x the total incident power per unit area. Even if they somehow get more power (by utilizing UV light, for example, which the atmosphere mostly absorbs), you can't ignore transmissions losses, which are going to be nontrivial from geosynchronous orbit.
So let me get this straight... they're planning on spending about 100x the cost of a terrestrial system for 3x the power gain? Wow, what a business case! Let me sign right up, I want to buy their stock *NOW* before anyone else gets wind of this!
Even if we're incredibly generous and let them have a 10x reduction in launch costs (wishful thinking), then they're still off by a factor of 3x from matching, let alone beating, terrestrial solar power costs.
And no wait.. I forgot.. they still need a stupid huge ground station to collect the power! So, all that money they saved having to install ground based equipment? Still have to spend it! My back-of-the-envelope maths (probably wrong) is that if they use a 1 mm wavelength microwave beam, they're looking at a receiver over 1 km wide due to diffraction limits. Mmm... cheap.
It's just inverstor and stock buzz! (Score:3, Insightful)
Wireless power transmission? Not yet possible!
Wired power transmission? Only in low-end comics and sci.fi.
Ground based receiving plant? Not yet designed!
Security? Not even taken into account!
Money from investments and stock markets? Yeah!
Crazy units (Score:3, Informative)
"Almost 200 million gigawatts of solar energy is beamed towards the Earth every second, which is more energy than our civilization has used since the dawn of the electrical age."
Let's see. 200 million gigawatts * 1 second = 0.2 exajoules. Worldwide energy consumption is on the order of hundreds of exajoules per year.
This article must be using the wrong units somewhere, but I guess that's just the status quo nowadays.
Re:So long cables running from space to earth? (Score:5, Informative)
you clearly did not RTFA. microwave.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So long cables running from space to earth? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:So long cables running from space to earth? (Score:5, Funny)
If SimCity 2000 is anything to go by this venture will result in a massive fire, followed closely by an alien invasion.
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Re:So long cables running from space to earth? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It seems like it could be made pretty safe. Have the receiver constantly sending a keep alive signal back to the satellite as long as the power beam is on target. If the beam drifts off target for any reason, the keep alive stops, and the satellite will stop sending down energy until it can be properly realigned. It does mean that you lose power for a bit, but that's probably preferable to losing power AND nuking some poor schmuck's house.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You know how the latency in a satellite kills that way of communications for gaming, correct? Considering that light travels 180,000 miles per second, and that geostationary satellites are 20,000 miles away minimum, that is a good fraction of a second where the satellite can be knocked out by space debris or what not. Imagine the swath it's aiming at with just a small degree, we are probably talking at least dozens of miles.
OTOH, the energy would be distributed along that entire area, but still.
Re:So long cables running from space to earth? (Score:5, Insightful)
That applies to any power source you can think of. The usual solution is to have some spare capacity to cope with such situations.
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Re:So long cables running from space to earth? (Score:4, Informative)
If this article can be believed it's hardly as dangerous as you're making it out to be.
http://permanent.com/p-sps-bm.htm [permanent.com]
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
A rectenna is much cheaper per m^2 than a solar cell.
And 3 times as efficient.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
How exactly are they going to get the power back down from space?
Microwave transmission [wikipedia.org].
Re:So long cables running from space to earth? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, you're wrong, the real question is why the hell are you up there in the first place trying to get power? There are literally thousand of square miles here on earth where you can put solar power panels that are 10,000 times cheaper. Yes, they may drop to 33% efficiency compared to an equivalent panel in space due to atmospheric absorption/reflection of the light. Yes, you may have to clean the solar panels here on earth more often, but there is nothing here that makes up for a 10,000 to 1 installation cost difference.
Until someone can explain that, this whole business model is all pie int he sky BS. This doesn't pass the laugh test.
Oh... and once you handle that hurdle (good luck), THEN you have to deal with the "how do you get it back to earth" question in a way that *maintains* the 3x power advantage you gained by being up there in the first place.
d
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with massive arrays of otherwise unused areas is the lack of global electricity grid to deliver the power from, for example, the desert to where the big cities are without massive losses on the way.
A space based power system has the advantage that the receiver can be placed near (*1) the population centers.
note 1: as near if not nearer than a nuclear power station for example.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm afraid you're wrong on this one. Low earth orbit is defined as 100 miles to 1240 miles (according to wikipedia). So the *closest* you can possibily get with a satalite is 100 miles... now the problem is that if you're 100 miles above the earth you have to be spinning around the earth at a tremondous speed in order to stay in orbit. This means you can't really aim your power sending beam of whatever (uwave in this stupid article) at a single base station and you've got to be rotating A LOT to keep ai
Re:Space debris? (Score:4, Interesting)
This is probably why they have Feng Hsu [spaceenergy.com], NASA's head of Risk Management for Safety and Mission Assurance, at the top of the list of experts they have helping advise the project. While I'll agree with what another poster said, most of the website reads like marketing towards investors, they do at least have some real experts involved and are serious about attempting this.
Personally I hope they succeed (and that they're hiring when I finish school).
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Business costs? (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's see the practicalities here:
1) Finding funding for building solar panels in space taking into account space insurance, multiple launches, space walk fees by NASA, etc.
2) Microwave power that can possibly fry the contents aluminium cans with wings that fly all over the world? It requires dedicated road to space. That costs money in many ways: First of all congressional critters and senators have to bought to introduce an amendment that would allow FTA and FCC to provide an exemption to existing air occ
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The earth atmosphere is quite transparent to what humans usually call light. that is, visible light. a very tiny portion of the spectrum.
But, the sun emit much more than visible light. If you can use UV or higher frequency, or perhaps a wider spectrum, then you get a lot more energy than the equivalent setup on earth.
And, I agree with the other parts. Once you have your nice space-based energy collector, then you have a lot of energy, in space. it would be nice to find a way to take it back to places that u
Not so much... (Score:5, Informative)
First figure that the cost of putting a kilo in orbit is NOT going to go below $300, period. Not if you're lifting stuff into space with any sort of chemical rocket. So the cost of a kilowatt of SPS power is going to be MUCH higher. OK, you're PV cells are lets say 400% more efficient, but then you also have to build a giant rectenna or 10 and losses beaming power back to Earth then eats up 50% of your efficiency gains, so hey, it is only 10x more expensive than putting it in Nevada!
The other problem is we still have no idea how to build really large structures in space. Obviously it can be done, but anyone who thinks the basic engineering of that solution will not cost 100's of billions of $ is well, another O'Neil, and if he was even order of magnitude on with his numbers it would be happening now. It is a lot harder than people think. It is a lot harder than engineers think (who usually only underestimate by about 300%).
What we need is HUGE quantities of power. The US needs 15 TERAWATTS of renewable energy installed base in the next 20 years. The gating factor is cost, not efficiency. Instead of screwing around for 20 years figuring out how to build it in space, for no clear benefit, we need to just BUILD IT NOW. Time is a wasting.
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Re:Do the math, folks (Score:5, Informative)
Parent post is good, but it's really much simpler than that.
Cost per kg to send something to GEO orbit: $10,000
Cost of solar cells per kg: $400
Space-based cells produce about twice as much energy as the same panels on the ground.
So until launch costs drop to equal to the cost to build the panels, it'll be cheaper to just build twice as many panels on the ground.
Space-based power is a factor of 20 away.
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