Europe Is Seriously Considering a Major Investment In Space-Based Solar Power (arstechnica.com) 166
Europe is seriously considering developing space-based solar power to increase its energy independence and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the leader of the European Space Agency said this week. Ars Technica reports: "It will be up to Europe, ESA and its Member States to push the envelope of technology to solve one of the most pressing problems for people on Earth of this generation," said Josef Aschbacher, director general of the space agency, an intergovernmental organization of 22 member states. Previously the space agency commissioned studies from consulting groups based in the United Kingdom and Germany to assess the costs and benefits of developing space-based solar power. ESA published those studies this week in order to provide technical and programmatic information to policymakers in Europe. Aschbacher has been working to build support within Europe for solar energy from space as a key to energy de-carbonization and will present his Solaris Program to the ESA Council in November. This council sets priorities and funding for ESA. Under Aschbacher's plans, development of the solar power system would begin in 2025.
In concept, space-based solar power is fairly straightforward. Satellites orbiting well above Earth's atmosphere collect solar energy and convert it into current; this energy is then beamed back to Earth via microwaves, where they are captured by photovoltaic cells or antennas and converted into electricity for residential or industrial use. The primary benefits of gathering solar power from space, rather than on the ground, is that there is no night or clouds to interfere with collection; and the solar incidence is much higher than at the northern latitudes of the European continent.
The two consulting reports discuss development of the technologies and funding needed to start to bring a space-based power system online. Europe presently consumes about 3,000 TWh of electricity on an annual basis, and the reports describe massive facilities in geostationary orbit that could meet about one-quarter to one-third of that demand. Development and deployment of these systems would cost hundreds of billions of euros. Why so much? Because facilitating space-based solar power would require a constellation of dozens of huge, sunlight-gathering satellites located 36,000 km from Earth. Each of these satellites would have a mass 10 times larger, or more, than that of the International Space Station, which is 450 metric tons and required more than a decade to assemble in low Earth orbit. Launching the components of these satellites would ultimately require hundreds or, more likely, thousands of launches by heavy lift rockets. "Using projected near-term space lift capability, such as SpaceX's Starship, and current launch constraints, delivering one satellite into orbit would take between 4 and 6 years," a report by British firm Frazer-Nash states. "Providing the number of satellites to satisfy the maximum contribution that SBSP could make to the energy mix in 2050 would require a 200-fold increase over current space-lift capacity." Critics of the concept include Elon Musk and physicist Casey Handmer, among others, which take issue with the poor photon to electron to photon conversion efficiency and prohibitively expensive transmission losses, thermal losses, and logistics costs.
In concept, space-based solar power is fairly straightforward. Satellites orbiting well above Earth's atmosphere collect solar energy and convert it into current; this energy is then beamed back to Earth via microwaves, where they are captured by photovoltaic cells or antennas and converted into electricity for residential or industrial use. The primary benefits of gathering solar power from space, rather than on the ground, is that there is no night or clouds to interfere with collection; and the solar incidence is much higher than at the northern latitudes of the European continent.
The two consulting reports discuss development of the technologies and funding needed to start to bring a space-based power system online. Europe presently consumes about 3,000 TWh of electricity on an annual basis, and the reports describe massive facilities in geostationary orbit that could meet about one-quarter to one-third of that demand. Development and deployment of these systems would cost hundreds of billions of euros. Why so much? Because facilitating space-based solar power would require a constellation of dozens of huge, sunlight-gathering satellites located 36,000 km from Earth. Each of these satellites would have a mass 10 times larger, or more, than that of the International Space Station, which is 450 metric tons and required more than a decade to assemble in low Earth orbit. Launching the components of these satellites would ultimately require hundreds or, more likely, thousands of launches by heavy lift rockets. "Using projected near-term space lift capability, such as SpaceX's Starship, and current launch constraints, delivering one satellite into orbit would take between 4 and 6 years," a report by British firm Frazer-Nash states. "Providing the number of satellites to satisfy the maximum contribution that SBSP could make to the energy mix in 2050 would require a 200-fold increase over current space-lift capacity." Critics of the concept include Elon Musk and physicist Casey Handmer, among others, which take issue with the poor photon to electron to photon conversion efficiency and prohibitively expensive transmission losses, thermal losses, and logistics costs.
ESA Wankery (Score:5, Informative)
The French would never launch on a SpaceX system so this will stay as a "serious consideration".
Re: ESA Wankery (Score:2)
If they use Ariane 6, it will certainly be cost prohibitive. The ESA will need reusable rockets before they can even think about something like this.
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So, yeah.
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SimCity 2000 and 3000 would like a word with the ESA. There is literately an accident called "OOPS" that can happen with the microwave power plant which works (fictionally) as proposed by the ESA.
But hey, at least it's not a nuclear accident.
Re:ESA Wankery (Score:5, Interesting)
To cause that kind of accident the microwave link would need to be massively more concentrated than they are proposing. It just couldn't happen, because the transmitter is a fixed array, and would burn out if any part of it concentrated energy to the level that would cause harm on Earth.
That's also why they aren't proposing to use mirrors to direct sunlight down to Earth for collection. That would require concentration, or at least have the possibility of it happening. Their plan is less efficient, they have to convert photons to electricity to photons to electricity, but it's failsafe.
Re: ESA Wankery (Score:4, Informative)
Ah, did some idiot redefine "fail safe" because they didn't understand what it meant?
"the idea is to design the system to fail safely when an issue occurrs."
Um....
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However, there are so many roofs of buildings yet to convert to solar that already expanding to space makes no sense at all.
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Agreed. The EU comprises about 4 million km^2. According to the OECD [oecd.org], about 3% of that is the "built-up area" (cities, roads, factories, rail lines, etc.), or 130,000 km^2. From here, let's add some ballpark numbers:
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I think it's worthy of study. After taking into account capacity factors, the higher solar constant, and conversion losses, you get 4x the power per unit panel area, maybe more. Your mountings don't need to bear wind or snow loads, or even gravity loads - just very minor torquing. Your power is baseload, not intermittent, and not seasonally biased. Etc.
Say Starship gets $50/kg to GEO (it should be cheaper, potentially much cheaper) and large-scale space-based solar is 300W/kg (it could be better). That's
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When in doubt, sci-fi themed mental masturbation always works in lieu of actual action! Right?
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I would argue that all action starts out as "mental masturbation", sci-fi or otherwise.
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Re:ESA Wankery (Score:4, Informative)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
Long story short, the launch cost per pound needs to come down by several orders of magnitude to make it cheeper than *building new nuclear power plants* which is among the most expensive power plant we can build at the moment.
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Nobody does, not practically. There's somebody who's getting close to building one though. And coincidentally....
https://www.reuters.com/world/... [reuters.com]
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From the summary:
"development of the solar power system would begin in 2025"
So launch availability *today* is irrelevant.
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Yeah I don't think this is going to be finished in less than a year.
ESA does not equal "Europe" (Score:5, Informative)
Please stop equating ESA or the European Union to the continent of Europe. They are not the same entities.
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Er, are you saying Boris Johnson has some friends in Europe, or what?
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No, they're saying that, for example, Switzerland, Turkey (partly), and Ukraine are also legitimate parts of Europe.
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He is a European.
Born in the US and has spent most of his professional life lying about the EU and trying to extricate the UK from it.
Huh? I'm not aware of him ever saying good things about the EU, so how exactly was he lying?
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Alternative headline: ESA seriously considering a project that could justify its own existence and get more funding.
That happening at a time when the countries funding it are having trouble finding enough fuel for winter and facing serious inflation and poor economy is purely coincidental.
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This project would kick the ESA out of the launch business for good. It requires far cheaper and more numerous launches than the ESA can provide to be even slightly feasible, so it would force them to buy Starship launches. Once they do that for the project that does 99% of their launches, they won't be able to justify maintaining their own rockets or launch facilities.
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Yep.
Europe is an actual location.
The EU is a destructive pipe dream.
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The EU is a tool to let international corporations screw over the people and for politicians to have a scapegoat for the legislation they want to push but don't want to take responsibility for. A unified Europe would be a good idea, but in its current form, all it is is a economic and political tool to screw its subjects.
Re: ESA does not equal "Europe" (Score:5, Insightful)
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There's no surer way to doom humanity than putting all our eggs in one basket. There'd be nowhere for refugees to escape to when absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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The EU is a destructive pipe dream.
Thanks for the tip, Tucker.
From TFA (Score:5, Insightful)
"It's the stupidest thing ever," he [Elon Musk] said, several years ago. "If anyone should like space solar power, it should be me. I've got a rocket company, and a solar company. I should be really on it. But it's super obviously not going to work. It has to be better than having solar panels on Earth. With a solar panel in orbit, you get twice the solar energy, but you've got to do a double conversion: Photon to electron to photon, back to electron. What's your conversion efficiency? All in, you're going to have a real hard time even getting to 50 percent. So just put that solar cell on Earth."
And he is not alone. In an online analysis, physicist Casey Handmer outlined four areas in which costs will make space-based solar power prohibitively expensive: transmission losses, thermal losses, logistics costs, and a space technology penalty. By Handmer's estimate, space-based solar power is at least "three orders of magnitude" more expensive than terrestrial-based energy sources.
"I can relax assumptions all day," Handmer wrote. "I can grant 100 percent transmission efficiency, $10/kg orbital launch costs, complete development and procurement cost parity, and a crippling land shortage on Earth. Even then, space-based solar power still won’t be able to compete. I can grant a post-scarcity fully automated luxury communist space economy with self-replicating robots processing asteroids into solar panels, and even then people will still prefer to have solar panels on their roof."
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Well, Musk is wrong.
No ides if it ever would make economical sense (mainly because of the launch costs) however the photon to electricity conversion arriving on earth is more at the 75% range efficiency or hight.
On top of that: a solar plant on GEO converts sun light to electricity 24/365. A solar roof, not even 6 hours (on a 12h or longer daytime, you can simply forget the 3h before and after that 6h peak period).
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I do believe you left out weather satellites. And GPS. And satellite maps.
Re: From TFA (Score:2)
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What do you mean "future" this is basically the plot of Goldeneye.
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What about a cluster of satellites that each beam microwaves at a different vector, each one, by itself, would not be enough energy to cause harm, but, together, they all concentrate at a collection point?
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they all concentrate at a collection point?
if those beams do still "concentrate" you can't be sure it won't be over a school by accident, and even if every beam had its own "collector" it would be open to malicious manipulation.
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Ah, you've played SimCity. Fortunately real proposals have heard of rectennas.
Expect Elon Musk's opinion to about face when someone explains to him that space-based solar is completely impractical unless you have a launch vehicle as cheap as Starship.
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Would need to be in geosynchronous orbit and have a target it was sending to 24/7. I don't think that was the plan. I'm highly skeptical on solar promises since I had solar panels in the 1980s and they failed to produce big time. Solar heat? The heaters worked great, but ran about 2 hours in the winter. Solar power? Was break even in the summer despite 16 hours of sunlight sometimes (and 3 if the weather was rainy). Today I worry that the panels NEED to be made in China and batteries also are made in China
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> I'm highly skeptical on solar promises since I had solar panels in the 1980s and they failed to produce big time.
Real shame neither the price nor efficiency of solar energy has improved in the past 40 years...
Anywho, the reasoning behind putting the solar panels in orbit is that they will get sunlight basically 24/7, and above the atmosphere the solar radiance is about 40% higher, meaning you get 40% more output than the same collection area on the ground. Of course historically getting them up there i
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the reasoning behind putting the solar panels in orbit is that they will get sunlight basically 24/7, and above the atmosphere the solar radiance is about 40% higher, meaning you get 40% more output than the same collection area on the ground.
Yeah, but then you have to do multiple conversion stages to get back to electrons. The big benefit is that you can use frequencies that penetrate clouds, so you get to have solar power all the time. Arguably it still costs too much to put stuff in orbit to be sufficiently beneficial to do that.
I suspect it still makes more sense to put more money into low-cost, long-life batteries that are cheaper and cleaner over their lifespan, and use them to smooth out the peaks and valleys in solar production. Any reas
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Couldn't you have a fleet of LEO satellites? Sort of like StarLink except instead of beaming radio waves, they each beam microwave energy only within a certain arc, keeping it's beam focused and centered on a collection point on the ground. That way, each beam, by itself would be low enough energy that it wouldn't cause harm if it was misaligned and it would only be beaming energy during a particular window as it passed over the collector. This would also allow other nations to tap into the same system and
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They both seem to have missed the point of it, which is to generate business for European launch companies. Just like Starlink, the main goal is to create demand for launches, and thus investment in development and reducing cost.
Providing useful energy is a side benefit. Maybe it's too ambitious, but people said that when Musk wanted to put 30,000+ satellites in LEO, each with a 5 year lifespan.
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The main goal of Starlink is to make money, to pay for colonizing Mars. It leverages Starship, which is needed for the same goal.
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Musk has a great way of explaining economic problems. There is a big difference between what is technically possible in space, and what makes any practical sense.
It reminds me on his comments about mining on Mars:
"If you had crack-cocaine on Mars, in prepackaged pallets, it still wouldn't make sense to transport it back here."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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"It's the stupidest thing ever," he [Elon Musk] said, several years ago. "If anyone should like space solar power, it should be me. I've got a rocket company, and a solar company. I should be really on it. But it's super obviously not going to work. It has to be better than having solar panels on Earth. With a solar panel in orbit, you get twice the solar energy, but you've got to do a double conversion: Photon to electron to photon, back to electron. What's your conversion efficiency? All in, you're going to have a real hard time even getting to 50 percent. So just put that solar cell on Earth."
Well if ol' Musky thinks it's stupid, then it's probably a pretty good idea! At least worth studying further.
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Space based solar power doesn't make sense before we are doing asteroid mining, because it is just too expensive to deploy. Once we are doing that, it's probably the only form of power generation that does make sense... but that's not now.
Why does it make more sense than terrestrial solar panels? Because it reduces the need for storage. It will work in any weather conditions; though there will be attenuation, it's less than for the frequencies required by solar panels. And it will provide power for more hou
Even if they could built it... (Score:5, Interesting)
... and they can't, would other governments not to mention the population of europe really want GW laser beams pointing at the earth where even the tiniest alignment error from 36000K away could mean vaporising people or infrastructure.
There are many sensible ideas in science fiction, this old trope isn't one of them.
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It would be fun to watch birds fly through the beam.
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Or planes.
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It would be fun to watch birds fly through the beam.
Or planes.
Or Superman! Oh, wait...
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Well, what if you just built a space elevator and connected space to earth via superconducting electric cables inside the elevator tether, thus substituting one more or less impossible to solve problem for another?
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Unfo
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We do not use _lasers_ and the energy beam would be very wide and very low density. ...
You would not feel a thing
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We do not use _lasers_ and the energy beam would be very wide and very low density. You would not feel a thing ...
“It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt” -- Mark Twain
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Yeah, you might want to google a little before you post stuff like that. Or at least hit the AC button.
Try "space solar rectenna."
Re: Even if they could built it... (Score:2)
[Scott snickers]
Dr. Evil: What?
Scott: The Alan Parsons Project was a progressive rock band from 1982. Why don't you just name it Operation Wang Chung, ass?
EU is the worst... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm Spaniard, meaning European from EU, and I ask myself: why TF do they have to build a f***** solar power plant in space when in sourthern Spain we have ~350 days with sun.
Oh, I know, they need to steal more money with hidden costs & pay friends...
Re:EU is the worst... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Another valid question could be: Why has Spain not planted a lot of this bare terrain already full of solar panels?
There's a geopolitical element to all of this which is that certain European countries need to be at ahead of everyone else when it comes to energy in order to maintain a competitive advantage, otherwise their industrial sector just becomes too expensive, and well, will end up like Spain's or Italy's industry. Lurking in the shadows of all this is Germany's master plan named energiewende making a lot of decisions for EU infrastructure, ensuring that Germany stays at the centre of the EU's energy considerati
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This decision is all up to Spain. They would only have to do without subsidies, making it harder.
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Another valid question could be: Why has Spain not planted a lot of this bare terrain already full of solar panels?
Spain is broke, and worldwide demand exceeds worldwide supply of solar panels. So it's a valid question, but it's trivially answered.
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I'm Spaniard, meaning European from EU, and I ask myself: why TF do they have to build a f***** solar power plant in space when in sourthern Spain we have ~350 days with sun.
Oh, I know, they need to steal more money with hidden costs & pay friends...
For exactly the same reason you're not putting YOUR panels in Morocco, which has even better insolation. You don't want to hand your energy production to someone else and let them price-gouge you, have the ability to switch you off at a whim, exert political pressure through the threat of doing that, etc. We already did that with Putin and natgas, and see how well it's working.
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You don't want to hand your energy production to someone else and let them price-gouge you
Which is exactly what European countries do. Because of the holy "market", and sometimes because we like to externalize harm, there is always another one that can do it cheaper. Europe gets its clean energy from Scandinavia, and its gas from Russia.
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Only monopolies can get away with price-gouging.
If the power were sold by many independent firms (not states, which are inherently monopolies), competition would force them to price according to supply and demand. Anyone who tried to charge more would just lose the business.
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For exactly the same reason you're not putting YOUR panels in Morocco, which has even better insolation/quote?
That makes zero sense. Spain is in the EU meanwhile Morocco is a completely foreign entity located on an unstable continent with known militants wandering around in the best places to mount them and separated by a major sea.
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Translation (Score:2)
"Europe is seriously considering something" only means that in the EU parliament, some backseat wankers needed a reason to justify their existence and will meet and talk until the heat death of the universe or until another topic needs their attention (read: Something with more media appeal comes along).
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So you mean like every major legislative body?
Emissions to get the things to space? (Score:4, Insightful)
I was under the impression that sending things to space requires a ridiculous amount of non-renewable energy. Has anyone seriously calculated when the solar panels would break even, especially compared with a comparable installation on Earth? Also, what is the cost of replacing panels 20 years down the road when they start degrading?
It is probably much cheaper to just fill Sahara with panels and invent some way of storing and reusing energy during the night.
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Back-of-the-envelope, it's not bad. Energy cost breakeven is weeks, not months or years. (Money cost much, much longer.)
Yes, Sahara panels would be much cheaper. The problem is the Sahara is controlled by people who have reasons to be tempted to either price-gouge (if controlled by a monopoly such as Saharan governments) or use the power as a political lever (as Russia is doing now with gas).
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There are large deserts all over the world [wikipedia.org], there is really no shortage of suitable locations for solar farms. Not that you can just plop them down any old place, but adding more of them makes more locations viable (right next to the ones you've just added) so it's not a show-stopper, just a thinker.
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Yes, Sahara panels would be much cheaper. The problem is the Sahara is controlled by people who have reasons to be tempted to either price-gouge (if controlled by a monopoly such as Saharan governments) or use the power as a political lever (as Russia is doing now with gas).
I think more importantly the Sahara is full of militants who are very anti-Western and who wouldnt mind taking out a bit of Europe's power supply. France hasnt had its military active in North Africa for over a decade because it's a stable place.
It could look something like this (Score:2)
What if you used think a thin film solar cell a couple micron thick in between a mylar sandwich as a solar sail for a helio gyro? Connect the tips of two rotors with some carbon fiber strand to get an up and down string with enough insulation to survive many many Megavolts (need to keep the current down) which you can hopefully use directly with a Klystron without DC-DC (adjust the Klystron mechanically to adjust for voltage variation?).
The design space is a little different in vacuum, you wouldn't build th
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Besides a big reduction in launch costs, what's needed for orbital solar power to make sense is a big improvement in thin film solar panel longevity. It's not very good here on earth. It's going to be worse in space. That's what happened to Nanosolar. Everybody wanted their product, which BTW would have been ideal for solar power satellites. But then it turned out that while they could produce it, they couldn't make it durable, and the cost of crystalline panels came down substantially around the same time
Re: It could look something like this (Score:2)
A significant problem is making good flexible transparant oxygen and water vapour barriers. Hail is a problem too.
In space there will be other problems, but their significance can't really be determined by factors only relevant on earth.
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A significant problem is making good flexible transparant oxygen and water vapour barriers. Hail is a problem too.
The degree to which that should be difficult and/or expensive varies based on the substrate. Most flexible panels are not flapping in the wind, they are attached down to a hard surface.
In space there will be other problems, but their significance can't really be determined by factors only relevant on earth.
If you think it's hard to make a good flexible, transparent barrier that works on Earth, wait until you try to make one that holds up in space. Thin film solar still depends on that.
If your only tool is a hammer ... (Score:2)
Of course it would be much better to put solar panels in the Sahara desert and link Europe to them with DC undersea cables. Efforts in that direction are long underway [wikipedia.org], but with the political instability in North Africa the implement
Re: If your only tool is a hammer ... (Score:2)
If Morocco had joined the EU at the start it would be possible, but now the political stability makes it a non starter.
power-time per time (Score:2)
3000 TWh per year? It's easier to say an average of 340 GW.
So the race is on... (Score:5, Funny)
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Nothing if it has a negative coefficient. Also many nuclear fission reactors have been sent to space already. Worst case scenario, the rocket explodes and spreads nuclear waste into the waters (since rockets are intentionally shot over waters) - but guess what - 8 feet of water protects you from the fallout, exactly why they are shot over waters.
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...space-based solar power vs nuclear fusion. Which will become viable first?
Why not both?
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Getting closer (Score:2)
Now that we're considering space-based solar collection, we need to start producing gundams so we can have worldwide conflict over energy resources.
you don't say? (Score:2)
Say "we don't have any fucking ideas about how to square our unrealistic eco goals with our all-too-realistic and swelling energy demands" without actually saying "we don't have any fucking ideas about how to square our unrealistic eco goals with our all-too-realistic and swelling energy demands" so here's an idea, let's solve it with the bureaucratic equivalent of unicorns and rainbows?
At least we can say we HAVE a solution, it's just a "lack of public commitment" preventing it from being realized, right?
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Say "we don't have any fucking ideas about how to square our unrealistic eco goals with our all-too-realistic and swelling energy demands" without actually saying "we don't have any fucking ideas about how to square our unrealistic eco goals with our all-too-realistic and swelling energy demands" so here's an idea, let's solve it with the bureaucratic equivalent of unicorns and rainbows?
At least we can say we HAVE a solution, it's just a "lack of public commitment" preventing it from being realized, right?
If recent history is any indication, they'll fix their problem by levying a fine on Google or Apple. It's a non-sequitur, but sounds like the standard solution.
Reaction Wheels Anyone? (Score:5, Funny)
When Kepler's reaction wheels failed, it couldn't aim its telescope. When the reaction wheels on this giant laser blaster get some space-grit stuck in them, we'll finally know what all those ants thought when a 5 year old with a magnifying glass came along.
Someone was reading Niven's (Score:2)
Wait for asteroidal metals (Score:2)
How long is it going to take to send up all the structural components of the collector array, and at what cost, for arrays measured in square kilometers? It will probably be cheaper to wait until structural steel shapes are available from asteroid mining, and then just launch the PV cells from Earth.
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The best way would be to get aluminum structural material AND solar cells from the moon.
Critics of the concept... (Score:2)
Critics of the concept ... take issue with the poor photon to electron to photon conversion efficiency....
That's why we should avoid these conversion losses and just use mirrors to redirect and intensely focus a beam of sunlight to receiving stations in the middle of urban areas. What could go wrong? :)
Not for now (Score:2)
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Probably, because TWh is what you usually use to measure eletric power at single nation level.
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Distance to the Sun is 1 au, which is 150 million kilometers .
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Astronomers routinely use AU for distance in the solar system instead of km.
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The big selling point of solar power satellites is that you use frequencies which interact less with the atmosphere and stuff in it than the energy which is currently being collected by terrestrial solar panels. They will be in LEO, where they will be blocking sunlight from reaching the planet. QED, they will actually reduce atmospheric heating due to radiative effects.