Slashdot Mirror
Palau May Get Satellite Power In the Next Decade
davidwr writes "The island nation of Palau is looking into creating a satellite-to-ground power transmission system. The system would use low-orbit satellites to transmit power to a receiver in bursts, unlike some other plans which rely on geostationary satellites. The initial 1-megawatt project is supposed to go online 'as early as' 2012 for a cost of $0.8 billion. Time will tell if this can be made cost-effective compared to traditional solar or other sources of power."
so why Palau? is the fact that its an island nation preferable for this technology?
FYI: I don't know what you guys are talking about half the time.
The description here is a bit misleading. From the sound of the article, Palau is really just a testbed for this technology. I'm assuming that they aren't footing any of the bill that is about 6X their GDP.
The island nation of Palau is looking into creating a satellite-to-ground power transmission system.
I'm sure the US Army already has such a thing, although they probably plan on using it to make glass parking lots.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Anyone else just flash on an image of a beam from space getting misaligned with the receiver and vaporizing sections of your city?
Technoli
Dr. No, that is!
Isaac Asimov wrote about a power source like this in "I, Robot." There were stations in space that absorbed solar energy and transmitted it back to Earth. If the ray became out of align, or if a magnetic storm intercepted the ray on its way toward the receptacle on the ground, it would distort the energy causing severe damage to huge portions of the planet. In the case of Palau, if they can get this technology working properly, it would be interesting to see how the United States or the EU would use this to aid their combat against global warming and non-renewable energy. Maybe the Space Station will get equipped with a huge solar array to send renewable energy down to Earth, eh?
--"Forget the nectar of the Gods, just give me some Mountain Dew."
Time will tell us "no" in a stern voice.
Or this is already almost safe technology?
As compared to early nuclear energy development, of course.
http://opencm3.net, http://www.nongnu.org/gm2/
They're paying $800 per watt, when a company is now shipping solar panels that cost under $1/watt, AND have a single, expensive point of failure? What is the point of beaming solar energy down from space, to a tropical island?
Ground-based solar including panels and batteries could be built local to each home or village, at a fraction of the cost of this over-engineered idea.
Live simply, that others may simply live. -Gandhi
Brown people surrounded by large bodies of water are better equipped to deal with being bombarded by intense solar radiation than white people surrounded by large buildings.
the side bonus to this system is that palau can widen the aperture and fuzzy the focus on the satellite, to the "ablate" setting, and burn off the ocean water encroaching on the last bit of high ground on the atoll
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I hope they will find some loyal robot Descartes!
One word: Popcorn!
So why waste time and money on these insane schemes? Presumably because the hidden agenda is military. The military don't care if their beamed power source ionises the hell out of the atmosphere (so long as their radio still works) or accidentally vaporises a few villages. They just want gee whiz toys to play with.
In a world with ample generation capacity, oil would be used to deliver power to areas which were unsuitable for alternatives. Small islands can be supplied nicely with a combination of solar and wind power, and stationary Diesel generators for fill in. Of course it's unglamorous technology, but for real engineers that's a plus. Orbiting power stations, with the incredible difficulty of maintenance, the vast quantities of oil needed to produce the fuel for the rockets that place them, the dangers of misaligned beams, the unknown effects on the atmosphere of beaming large amounts of ionising radiation through it, versus investing far less money in getting advanced solar cells to market faster? If you've got an emotional age over 16, no contest.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
-1, talking out of ass.
Hmmm, 1MW for $0.8B, that's $800/Watt. About 800x the cost of coal, and 200x the cost of old-school photovoltaics. That's quite a lot of ground to make up, especially given that presumably the largest component of expense -- launch costs -- have a very low likelihood of improving by this factor until something like the space elevator comes along.
This story seems like a hoax. The nation of Palau has only 20,000 people, and a annual GDP of $160M. Are they really going to invest in a single R&D project that costs five times their national GDP? I call BS.
I don't get how satellites can be cheaper than simply setting up bunches of solar panels on the ground. Putting poundage into space and managing it is damned expensive, let alone the precision aiming technology. I don't get the accounting here. Please help me, I'm a doctor, not an accountant (well ok, I'm not actually a doc, but it makes a better cliche).
Table-ized A.I.
...the natives believe their spam.
Table-ized A.I.
All the cooked birds you can eat.
Article: One NASA study visualized solar-panel arrays 3 by 6 miles in size, transmitting power to similarly sized rectennas on Earth.
1. That could glow pretty bright in the night sky. Environmentalists may complain.
2. So much for real-estate savings.
3. How the hell did the name "rectenna" get past the marketing department? Must be from the Uranus Ad Agency.
Table-ized A.I.
Just a note, I think there is a great deal of confusion about what a watt is. "The watt (symbol: W) is the SI derived unit of power, equal to one joule of energy per second. ... Power and energy are frequently confused in the general media, for instance when a device is said to be rated at "100 watts per hour", which does not make any sense since a watt is a rate of doing work or using energy of 1 joule of energy per second. As a rate itself, a watt does not need to be followed by a time designation, unless one is talking about a change in power over time, analogous to an acceleration or deceleration.
Because a joule as a quantity of energy does not have a readily imagined size to the layperson, the non-SI unit watt-hour, often in its multiples such the kilowatt-hour or higher prefixes, is frequently used as a unit of energy, especially by energy-supply companies (electricity and natural gas suppliers) which often quote charges by the kilowatt-hour. A kilowatt-hour is the amount of energy equivalent to a power of 1 kilowatt running for 1 hour:
(1 kWh)(1000 W/kW)(3600 s/h) = 3,600,000 Ws = 3,600,000 J = 3.6 MJ." (wikipedia.org: Watt)
well thank you bill nye the science guy! now if you'll just point out where this device states "100 watts per hour" your diatribe will be justified. until then... stfu!
From the full article : "You can get basically unlimited carbon-free power from this"
Uhm... Yes... After you launched lots of tons of material into the sky. Which happens to consume a hell of a lot of fuel.
1. Palau holds the world ransom for 1 million dollars or they aim the parsons project on them. 2. Palau tops world exports of fried birds..
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
I can already see a great TV reality show. "Beat the Waves", where contestants have 90 minutes to cross the island, preferably while trying to slow down the others in any way possible. Beer and chips ready, GO.
If you think the US would use this to combat global warming. More like use it to combat "terrorists".
I'm thinking if beaming a high energy beam through the atmosphere is really a good idea. If the air is not fully opaque to the beam it will absorb enegry from the beam which would warm the air and the earth. Also it might cause chemical reacions IE smog. I am thinking that someone has done research on the possible harm it might do???
When I was a boy the goverment stole everything from us.
Now china has working satellite kill weapons no doubt many other will follow (if they don't have them already). How many countries would want to risk their power infrastructure being vulnerable to someone pressing a launch button thousands of miles away with no risk to themselves whatsoever?
so their plan is to put a solar panel in space... because solar radiation is 8 times more powerful... umm... I'm pretty sure that putting the same surface area of solar panels in space is going to cost *way* more than 8 times as much as putting it on the ground.
Then of course there's the idea that we will somehow magically "beam" the energy to the ground. Here's an idea, we let the sunlight beam itself to the ground, instead of putting an enormous expensive satellite as an unnecessary intermediary in the process.
This is one of the sci fi ideas that sounds cool in a story because it involves big machines and lasers, but is totally nonsensical when you actually take ten seconds to think about it. File this in the same category as giant fighting robots and transporter beams.
It could make the arguments about GM crops look like a polite debate
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
"Independence from other countries for your energy -- priceless"
Sometimes its not about raw dollars, but security.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palau
There's 21,000 people in Palau.
So...who's going to come up with a billion dollars?
Half a dozen windmills would probably be enough to supply the whole island.
No sig today...
simply move the solar panels to being in front of the sun. And as somebody else pointed out, if we lose the CO2 emissions, we will radiate plenty of energy.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The US military came out with saying that they idea is doable for them, and with some real innovation, for the world. In terms of the US military, they want the ability to deliver power to troops on the ground as well as equipment there. A fly-by, combined with ultra-capacitors that DOD is funding, and now, we have the ability to deliver LOADS of power.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Well, I think this makes compelete sense - a lot of island communities tend to stick with alternative power supplies. In the US look at Maui, where solar power trumps all other power simply due to the fact that half of the island is brand-spanking-new in geologic terms, and putting power lines and poles in freshly hardened volcanic rock is prohibitively expensive. I can only imagine the same applies here. Also, does anyone remember GI Joe the movie? The broadcast energy device? So awesome that a childhood fictional device is actually coming to fruition :)
Pentagon squanders $800 million of your hard earned cash.
Now if they went to the UN Bank to borrow the $800 million, they might get an interest rate of 8%. The first year, the interest cost alone is $64 million. The satellite has beamed back 24 * 366 * $34 or a tad under $300,000. This plan can't pay back even 1/200th of the cost of money.
So I'll suppose that not first reading the article is acceptable physics. FWIW, I am a(n) ((astro)physicist, former spacecraft engineer, chemical, nuclear and broadcasting engineer, and instructor of vector fields.)
The prospect of gathering the huge amount of energy which attacks every m**2 of the illuminated side of this planet every second of every time unit has enticed for (name your own long long time unit here.)
Through the 1970s this was held to be a possible fix for the then-impending crash of carbon-burning-based economies. And it was studied quite thoroughly, yielding an entire text of papers, sponsored by NASA and the AIAA.
The result? The number of launches which inject directly some of the very worst ozone-depleting, greenhouse-effect-enhancing garbage into the upper atmosphere was not just prohibitive, but potentially disastrous. In short, the upper layers would be destroyed. And that UV would be all over us. (Disclaimer: I spent my early career years building instrumentation to measure the effects of UV on materials.)
Every launch does nasty things up there. At least 400 Atlas-class were required for the test cases studied, and that was before shuttles. They're lots bigger.
There are reasons why most carbon and minerals belong under rock, and humans should not venture too much out of caves, on the surface of this planet. We might have the protection of thin, wispy gas, but not much else.
Please try to find that text; it's been "missing from shelves" at the major libraries of the USA for many years.
I suspect there's some other motive to this other than just powering a small island. One could say attach a high powered laser system to it or the military could use it to power some of their remote equipment in places where it isn't easy to drag a generator along. Otherwise I don't see this as being very cost effective.
http://spacesolarpower.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/final-sbsp-interim-assessment-release-01.pdf
Long story short, if we get off our asses, in 50 years we can have energy independence, AND cheap access to space.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
Wind Turbines: It's bad because they kill birds (Which is debatable, but so group ran around claiming so and got published in USA Today. Which is where most people got the news so therefore people rant, "Wind power: Think of the birds!)
Solar Power: Not so great if you live in Seattle or any other city/part of the world that sees a lot of cloudy days. Also, ever looked into the chemicals used in producing Solar cells? Not exactly the most environmentally friendly stuff on earth.
There's no magic pill, no perfect solution, but the more options that are on the table the better.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Having said that, given the number of pedants on /. I should have written "capacity equivalent to the entire United States base load". I do know about the storage problem, thank you very much. I am also aware that we will most likely need to get rid of much of the existing hydro capacity owing to climate shift, and that geothermal energy has problems with locality and radioactivity in rocks except in a few optimum locations. I would rather my tax was being spent on fixing the issues with solar and wind power than on masturbatory fantasy death rays - which is where I came in on this.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
There isn't space in a Slashdot comment box to describe the many things wrong with this proposal, so I'll sum up:
.01% of a chance in hell of meeting the costs and schedules laid out in the article. (Though I suspect the high worldwide demand for handwavium integrated circuits, needed for aiming the satellite's antenna, may be the bottleneck in the end.)
If the new snake oil powered launchers come online on schedule, and the unobtanium mines in Siberia don't have a another bad winter - this proposal has abour
HAM radio operators everywhere are scrambling to stop this virtual power line from space.
I'm curious, but how much pressure would light exert on a 18 square mile surface? Wouldn't this mess up the orbit after a while?
Surely if you want to beam solar energy to earth it would be far easier just to put up a large parabolic collector/ emitter ( a mirror) and then use high frequency rectannna (solar cells) to use this power. This could conceivably make sense as a mirror can be made out of aluminised mylar and hence far lighter than a solar power plant, it would be more efficient, and it may make solar power much more economic, especially at higher latitudes - I guess it doesn't solve the cloud issue though.
in my favourite animated series "Future boy Conan" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Boy_Conan by Miyazaki.
In the series, solar power is beamed down from space to the Triangle tower. Dr. Lao, the scientist behind solar power development, explains the wrongs of their energy ambitions, and how the people just want to lead simple lives -- I wonder if this applies to Palau?
The story is based in 2008. It's uncanny! And what prescience, considering he completed it 30 years ago. I just hope he's not right about the tectonic upheavals and the whole apocalyptic part...
Please fasten your seat belts and put your tray tables in the locked, upright position as we fly over Palau, through their Megawatt beam.
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
the entire United States generation baseload could be provided from panels on public land in Arizona alone.
Helllooo.. ! Earth to Kupfernik!
Sadly, the people of Arizona may object to this crap being plastered all over their land.
And you DO know the people of Arizona don't you?
Well, if they object, try the state of Kansas.
I have a better suggestion:
It now runs my car, but it could just as easily run your air-conditioner, hot-tub and your mega cinema center with its gorgeous new Chinese 52" TV.!
Give it some thought! And go propose it to your local congressman idiot!
I just drop a few pellets of sodium into my car's gas tank (it is half-filled with distilled water of course) and the reaction generates HYDROGEN to run my fuel-cell engine! It's simple!
Bonus! At the end of the day, I siphon out the NAOH (it's Drano® ) and use it it to clean my kitchen and bathroom drains.
Just a small caveat: Make sure your hands are DRY before you drop in those sodium chunks. And don't let that that Drano burn your lips when you siphon it out!
Experimental results + a FREE pony! at tonyking.tk [tonyking.tk]
Note: Pinoqachole is not supplied with the sodium. But we are currently working on using Potassium, and perhaps even Cesium.
The ponies will cost extra, however.
>The actual use is, your army is invading some country far away, and is setting up a base
>camp in the middle of nowhere and would like some power.
Armies typically just use petroleum or nuclear power, as it is portable and reliable, whereas solar energy is neither. Really, I've never heard of an army concerning itself with making its energy source "green." After all, that would imply moral concerns that don't exist when participating in organized violence...