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Palau May Get Satellite Power In the Next Decade

Posted by kdawson on from the working-on-the-tan dept.

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."

2 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. let's do the math by Ancient_Hacker · · Score: 3, Informative
    Kinda silly, but let's do the math. We will assume you can build and loft the required equipment for the stated price. A satellite at 300 miles up is going to be overhead for maybe 10 minutes. Let's assume as in TFA it will send down a megawatt during that time. So on the average it's beaming down 166 kilowatts. A kilowatt-hour might cost as much as 20 cents on an island, so this satellite gives them about $34 per hour.

    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.

  2. Re:Just a demo by gerrytucker · · Score: 5, Informative

    I normally don't take the time to reply to Slashdot posts, but for some reason this response really jumped out at me. After really reading the article, not just one paragraph out of context, the reader clearly understands that a U.S. business man proposed this demo at an international conference and has German and Swiss partners in the project. Furthermore, they are going to be using one of the uninhabited islands as a safety precaution. The only mention of the U.S. military is that they did a 75 page study on the idea of transmitting power for military operations. After that, it only talks about the businessmen. Hardly the picture of the "war machine" pushing around a tiny nation which for some reason was scored as Informative.