PG&E Makes Deal For Solar Power From Space 392
N!NJA writes "California's biggest energy utility announced a deal Monday to purchase 200 megawatts of electricity from a startup company that plans to beam the power down to Earth from outer space, beginning in 2016. Solaren would generate the power using solar panels in Earth orbit and convert it to radio-frequency transmissions that would be beamed down to a receiving station in Fresno, PG&E said. From there, the energy would be converted into electricity and fed into PG&E's power grid."
Bad idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
makes no sense (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're lucky, you gain a factor of 2-4 in efficiency by going into space, but the costs per photocell are astronomically higher compared to installation in a desert.
That's, of course, assuming you can actually get other nations to agree to let you place a massive power plant and emitter in orbit, something that could easily be weaponized.
Re:makes no sense (Score:3, Insightful)
Ya know what else is astronomically more expensive? Getting power from a desert to where it is needed, and buying all that land in a desert. I'm not saying SSP is remotely close to being cost effective yet, but there's simply more to crunching the numbers than you think there is.
Re:Not a problem, don't be such worrywarts (Score:5, Insightful)
I sometimes wonder if SimCity has done more damage to the progress of orbital solar than all other causes combined.
Re:In all seriousness... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. But as the Russians found out - any energy source can be used as a weapon. The more people are dependent on it, the better. And such usage doesn't even involve violence - just mention that there might be some service disruptions, outages, etc, if you don't get your way.
Re:It think they've been duped. (Score:5, Insightful)
The solar constant is about 1.4 kW/m^2 in Earths orbit. I fail to see how they want to produce 200 MW with significantly less than 0.2 km^2 of collector area. Care to explain it to me?
ok, wait a second (Score:3, Insightful)
I am really a supporter of solar energy - I even have invested some of my money in it - but THIS to me seems like technological masturbation. I do not believe it's cost-effective, and the debris in orbit is only going to increase, so it's a risky investment in any case.
Nuclear! (Score:1, Insightful)
How is this cheaper or safer than nuclear? Nevermind the costs, would it even produce the same amount of power after transmission? Why is nuclear such a dead end? Before someone asks if I'd like a nuke plant in my backyard, YES, YES I would love it.
Cheap power and a healthy green glow beats go-nowhere plans and whining greenies any day of the week.
Re:Bad idea (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that a laser beam doesn't go any faster than light speed, either.
The satellite would have to determine on its own whether it's still pointing the right way.
Re:It think they've been duped. (Score:3, Insightful)
This _strongly_ depends on your orbit and your technology. Unless your collector is a sphere of solar cells, your collector or reflector arrangement will get different efficiencies depending on where it is pointing relative to the Sun. And for many geosynchronous orbits, the Earth will occlude the sunlight in the middle of the night.
Now, the currently available geosynchronous orbital space is dangerously cluttered. Big mirrors there are begging to get hit by satellite debris. A reasonably large solar mirror/solar sail can actually suspend itself in a wide variety of otherwise unstable orbits, using solar pressure for thrust. Those orbits are typically considerably higher than geo-synchronous, to take advantage of very modest thrust to balance the Earth's gravity, but there are big advantages in that you can put these _out_ of the way of the geosynchronous satellites, even off the ecliptic, and you can steer them into place using solar pressure from a lower altitude release. And, cleverly steered, you can make the orbit unstable enough to bring it right back to Earth and burn up in the atmosphere when the system fails.
This is one of the only sources of energy for our industrial world that does not require major technological miracles to expand to fill the entire world's energy needs. It's very expensive to start doing: the launch costs alone require a serious industrial civilization to support.
Re:It think they've been duped. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:In all seriousness... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it will never get off the ground.
Having said that, Solaren's web site is all about down to earth renewable projects. The 200MW of power the power company has pledged to buy is the equivalent of 40 commercial windmills. My guess is this is a "foot in the door" deal that cost neither party a cent but Solaren now know what the power company are willing to pay. Using this knowledge they can go back at a later date and convert the pie-in-the-sky pledge into a purchase from a normal wind/solar farm that will do the same thing for the same predetermined price.
Re:Bad idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that a laser beam doesn't go any faster than light speed, either.
The satellite would have to determine on its own whether it's still pointing the right way.
That's why I specified that the *receiver* have a very limited field of vision. If the satellite rotates enough to be off target, it can no longer see the laser. Thus no latency issues.
Re:Bad idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Note that I didn't say "bug free" - take three different architectures, and have three different teams write the code for them. Connect them in a "majority rules" redundant configuration. The odds of two of them experiencing bugs at the same time (or of having a hardware failure) producing the same result at the same time is pretty, well, astronomical...
Boeing tested this hypothesis -- it's called N-Version Programming -- and it doesn't work as nicely as we'd like. If you assume that the distribution of bugs is evenly random then yes, it's a great idea. But bugs don't do that, they tend to be clustered in particular modules and sections of code.
Boeing's study showed that multiple teams tended to have bugs in the same, complex areas. It was more cost-effective to do one implementation and spend more on it -- formal inspections, formal method proofs etc -- than to try N-Version Programming.
Sorry that I don't have a citation -- I think I saw it discussed in one of Steve McConnell's books.
Re:Bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Why don't you stand in front of a 200 Megawatt transmission and get back to us on that one?
Re:Bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)
I *GAVE* them a damned idea that would save MILLIONS and cost very little to implement. I even did the research myself. And THIS is what they're getting? My idea would've generated ten times the amount of power, at FAR LESS COST.
Then publish your research and promote it.