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."

Comments

why Palau?

[xubu_caapn]

so why Palau? is the fact that its an island nation preferable for this technology?

Just a demo

[dunadan67]

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.

Re:Just a demo

[gerrytucker]

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.

urban re-design and development

[User 956]

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.

SimCity

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

Anyone else just flash on an image of a beam from space getting misaligned with the receiver and vaporizing sections of your city?

Re:SimCity

[rickwood]

One solution is to power the satellite with a return beam from the Earth station. If the main beam wanders, it loses power and cuts off. There are other solutions.

Asimov

[radius1214]

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?

What kind of boondoggle is this?

[SKorvus]

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.

Something about water and melanin

[C10H14N2]

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.

Re:Something about water and melanin

[Ignis Flatus]

it may be right, but for the wrong reasons. skin color isn't going to make a difference when being hit by a misaligned microwave beam. use white and brown eggs in your own microwave to test this theory.

There are side benefits

[edwardpickman]

All the cooked birds you can eat.

let's do the math

[Ancient_Hacker]

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.

Interim Assessment of Space Solar Power...

[mikelieman]

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.