Space Based Solar Power Within a Decade? 371
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.'"
God's Speed and Good luck! (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
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:Yep (Score:5, Insightful)
Tiny effect (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I LOVE stories like this (Score:1, Insightful)
"...a combination of meeting the right people who could understand the vision and scope of what it is what we're doing, and raising the initial financing for the demonstrator."
Seriously? You aren't worried about how to beam the energy from orbit down to earth? You aren't worried about the damage that might be cause from a misfire? Read the article, you will see it is all businesspeak and handwaving from a guy trying to fleece investors. Here's another quote for you:
"....this project is an entrepreneurs' dream."
If that doesn't tell you who it's market towards......well, maybe you'd be interested in buying my prime quality bridge? Real estate is down these days, and I need an easy mark^W^W bit of money.
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.
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.
Re:So long cables running from space to earth? (Score:1, Insightful)
If the beam is less energy-intensive than sunlight, then what the hell good is it compared to just putting out a solar panel? I assume I'm missing something here.
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.
Re:Nuclear, please. (Score:1, Insightful)
Or perhaps, just maybe, humanity can afford to pursue two or more alternative energy strategies at the same time!
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
Re:Sounds great... (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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!
Guess how heavy (Score:1, Insightful)
A microwave beam in the sky would raise NIMBY, not in my back yard, to the nth power. It would be NIMS, not in my sky; "I might get fried if something goes wrong."
The article says, "The basic concept of SBSP is having solar cells in space collecting energy from sun, then converting the energy into a low intensity microwave beam..."
Other objections:
Solar cells are expensive, and there is plenty of desert, where they are far more easily placed and serviced. Solar cells require servicing; they aren't permanent.
A "low intensity" microwave beam will not carry much energy. A high intensity beam will be dangerous.
Birds and lost airplanes will be fried if the intensity is enough to carry much energy.
Reflections and scatter will create difficulties with radio transmissions and radar.
In my opinion, this is possibly FRAUD, attempting to take advantage of investors.
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...
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
Re:I LOVE stories like this (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 what your doing.
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 occupancy laws. Occupying a particular part of air and space 24x7 requires a lot of changes in laws and that costs money. Senators don't come cheap and with the ultra-clean image Obama is promoting, they are costly.
3) Downtime and Uptime for plugging into grids: Coal and Gas fired stations operate on a 99.9996% uptime. Even though the panels stay above weather, the downstreaming of microwaves are affected by Tornadoes, Winds, Storms, etc., This reduces the uptime. Grids don't like unscheduled downtimes.
4) Changes in Grid: It was set up primarily to draw energy from nearby coal-fired power plants and to provide a steady flow of electricity to customers. It was not intended to incorporate power from remote sources like solar panels and windmills, whose output fluctuates with weather conditions -- variability that demands a far more flexible operation. Translation: Storage and resuppy as capacitors or batteries or even to power compressed CO2 which can turn turbines to produce electricity. Is our Grid flexible?
5) Investment Returns: Investors of today expect quicker returns. Within 3 years max. The microwave alone will take about 5 years to setup not including space launch failures, damages panels and bolts, shuttle politics and ESA confrontation. Oh and i didn't include the cost of litigation to fight off patent challengers, copyright grabbers, and local politicians who would put a chicken in the microwave frying pan and show it to FOX as Fried, thus calling it "dangerous"
6) Enviro Nuts: All it takes would be one endangered spotted owl and an Eagle to be fried in the beam to bring the whole project down. With liberals in control and not republicans, they would surround the project to shut it down AND imprison the scientists who fried the eagle and owl.
7) Price of Oil: As an oil baron reportedly said to GM during the EV-1 days: "We can always drop the price of oil." All it takes for Exxon or BP to do is to drop the price of oil by the exact margin of profit of this solar project. Poof! There goes the investment.
8) OSHA and FCC(again): Damages to telecom networks and mobile systems will be high enough for OSHA to raid the plant. Plus FCC would probably put such a low threshold of voltage, that it would be useless except to power RFID chips in the FCC commissioner's passport.
To conclude, Peter Sage is a naive who has read too many "oil crisis" books and thinks starting and running a business in USA is easy.
Obviously he hasn't done it, yet.
Ask any small business owner in USA who has built a NEW business today.
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.
Re:useless (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 use energy, preferably without frying too many birds, planes, satellites, humans, and without having that nice 'death ray from the sky' option in the hand of industrials looking for profit.
But, let's be realist. If some people are ready to invest in so hard to use energy, why would a governement refuse to take a look at an intimidating weapon system ? And the same energy-redirecting system can be used on lower orbit to cover more ground, since you don't need a fixed receptor ...
Re:So long cables running from space to earth? (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 aiming this at the right spot. Very problematic. You're probably spinning around the planet once every 15 min or so. I don't care what population center you're aiming for, you're only going to be over it for a very short period of time.
Ok... so assume a geosynchronous orbit. This is now muuuuuch worse. You're 26,000 miles from the planet. This is not exactly what I'd call "near" a population center despite the fact that you can now be over it for 24 hours a day. Keep in mind the two cities on this plant can not be more than 12k miles apart.
Real numbers just doesn't back this crazy concept up in any way shape or form.
d
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?
Do the math, folks (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's do the math on this one.
Let's say we want to put up enough PV cells to replace just one largish power plant, say 1GW.
Using conservative estimates, and assuming everything works perfectly the first time, I get a cost per kilowatt-hour of close to $8.
That's mighty steep, like 80 times the going wholesale rate.
The numbers for those interested in such minutea:
watts delivered 1,000,000,000.000
conversion to AC 0.950
DC needed 1,052,631,578.947
uwave to DC 0.850
AC needed 1,238,390,092.879
Receiving ant. Eff 0.750
To recv ant. 1,651,186,790.506
Atm loss 0.900
from sat 1,834,651,989.451
xmt ant eff 0.900
to xmt ant 2,038,502,210.501
uwave gen eff 0.750
DC to uwave gen 2,718,002,947.334
Solar cell eff 0.150
Watts to s cell 18,120,019,648.896
watts per sq meter 1,400.000
avail of light 0.600
watts avg 840.000
sq meters needed 21,571,451.963
weight per sq m 5.000 lbs
cell weight 107,857,259.815
$/lb to geo $5,000.00
cost to lift $539,286,299,074.30
lbs/watt gen 0.010
lbs gen 27,180,029.473
cosrt cells/sq meter $1,000.00
cost cells $21,571,451,962.97
gen cost/watt 1.000
gen cost 2,718,002,947.334
tot cost 563,575,753,984.601
time to build 5.000 yrs
cost of money 5.00%
int factor 0.250
cost fin 704,469,692,480.751
yrs runs 10.000
cost/yr 70,446,969,248.075
kw gen 1,000,000.000
hrs/yr 8,766.000
kwh/yr 8,766,000,000.000
cost/kwh 8.036
current cost/kwh 0.100
overrun factor 80.364
Re:The author is a moron (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So long cables running from space to earth? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So long cables running from space to earth? (Score:3, Insightful)
The weapon abuse is small, since turning a massive satellite takes time.
So don't turn the satellite. Turn the emitter.
Re:Isn't cost a function of lifespan? (Score:3, Insightful)
The estimates I've seen put the lifespan more within 20 years, which is too short to make an economic case.
Like GPS, the first group to do SBSP is probably going to be the military, since they have reasons for getting power into remote areas that aren't strictly economic.
Re:So long cables running from space to earth? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think latency would be an issue. You don't need to time stamp the signal, just hear it. From the satellite point of view the break in signal would be instantaneous once it lost line of sight, even if that signal spent 2000ms to get there.
Re:Not so much... (Score:3, Insightful)
No, the 15 Terawatt estimate is assuming a fairly good level of efficiency gains already. I'm not going to throw out numbers off the top of my head, but you can easily find this data in various places online. Plenty has been written about it.
So if you want to go much below 15TW then you are going to have to tell people they can't do stuff, and that is what is called an 'unelectable candidate in the USA'.
I understand where you're coming from, and I agree that efficiency is the #1 way to get out of this jam we're in, but I don't really see how that bears on the argument. Either SPS ARE or ARE NOT more cost effective than terrestrial systems. There could be some ancillary advantages, but I don't see many, not unless you start building these things on the Moon or something, and that is a lot more than 30-40 years out. If we don't solve the 30-40 year problem, 100-300 years ain't going to happen, so it is kind of moot.