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Space Based Solar Power Within a Decade?
Nancy Atkinson writes "A new company, Space Energy, Inc., says they have developed what they call a 'rock-solid business platform' and they should be able to provide commercially available space based solar power within a decade. 'Although it's a very grandiose vision, it makes total sense,' Space Energy's Peter Sage told Universe Today. 'We're focused on the fact that this is an inevitable technology and someone is going to do it. Right now we're the best shot. We're also focused on the fact that, according to every scenario we've analyzed, the world needs space based solar power, and it needs it soon, as well as the up-scaling of just about every other source of renewable energy that we can get our hands on.'"
This is true - space-based solar power is indeed a very good (though not nearly perfect!) solution to energy needs. It also neatly solves energy locality problems - just install a receiver wherever you want, ideally. (probably not in the first version of the technology)
The downside is that importing energy from space upsets Earth's balance - but hopefully the new energy can be used to help remove some of the uneeded, less useful energy (atmospheric thermal energy, I'm looking at you).
But the potential is enormous. Coating the sunny side of the moon with solar arrays would provide something like 20 TW of power if I recall correctly - several times the total energy consumption of the Earth today.
Seriously, they just put a smile in my heart. It is just so stinking ridiculous that you ask yourself, "how in God's green earth did they EVER get anyone to pay them money to build that thing?" Who actually believes that you can put solar panels in space to generate electricity in a cost effective manner? Someone just bought the bridge.
It puts a smile in my heart because, at the end of the day, if we have enough extra resources in this country that we can afford to put them into such a ridiculous scheme, then the recession still isn't nearly as bad as it could be.
Awesome. Props to those salesmen.
Qxe4
you clearly did not RTFA. microwave.
The trick is beaming it back. They can either do it the less efficient way, such as what they're trying to do with wireless power chargers for phones and such, or they can beam it back as microwaves or as a focused heat and or light beam to a giant receiver. either way, the dangerous part is what happens if it somehow missed the receiver. it may become a weapon, or in the case of microwaves, make people sick and or kill them. If they can work the safety part out, it's a great plan though. P.S. I believe the article cites microwave as their preferred method.
How exactly are they going to get the power back down from space?
Microwave transmission.
My pics.
All they need are a couple of solar panels and a bunch of extension cords. I don't know about the solar panels, but home depot has 50ft extension cords that look pretty sturdy for only $20, and for the 20,000 of them or so that you would need I'm sure they could work in a discount.
Notably they fail to mention what is expected to be the long pole in the tent - launch costs. Even if Musk and SpaceX succeed, launch costs will still be at least an order of magnitude higher than what is estimated will be required for commercial success of space based power plants.
Even if we got our entire energy needs from this, the effect on the Earth's energy balance will be negligible compared to the effect of the additional heat trapped by our release of greenhouse gases.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
This isn't an ion cannon. The effects at the transmitter are minimal, so I'd expect they won't do much to a satellite.
http://permanent.com/p-sps-bm.htm
If this article can be believed it's hardly as dangerous as you're making it out to be.
http://permanent.com/p-sps-bm.htm
Whenever I see space-based solar power I never believe its economically viable. Based on that quote, they recognize that its not viable in the current market, and that average energy costs would have to increase by a factor of 15 to 20 times in order to make it viable. They think that the trends in energy cost are going to go that way. Somehow, I think as energy costs increase we'll get more creative on the ground, expanding ground based solar power, wind, nuclear, geo-thermal, etc., improving efficiency and developing new technologies to bring those costs back down.
As others have pointed out, launch costs are the critical, incredibly expensive aspect. In order to make it practical, we need to drastically reduce the access cost for space, by at least an order of magnitude. None of SpaceX's most optimistic estimates, or anyone elses, make it more viable.
However, there is a practical path for development of SBSP in military applications. A few satellites and some trucks with microwave receivers on the back are very appealing when compared with the current method for generating battlefield power: supply lines hauling in diesel fuel to power good old-fashioned generators. SBSP has great tactical advantages, and may actually be comparable in cost as well. From here, we may very well see it gain civilian applications as well.
This is silly. Putting solar panels in orbit? Please.
Use the money to build nuclear plants. Don't bore me with the waste issue. There is no such thing as waste, just more fuel.
Other benefits might include transmitting the power to remote locations where generation or transmittal is otherwise difficult (Antarctica for example), and more efficient power distribution on the power grid. If the power could be transmitted to different sites without significant loss, I^2xR losses in power lines across the grid could be minimized. Of note would be peak hours, and sunrise/sundown. I'm not sure what the power usage graphs look like, but I'm assuming there's enough fluctuation that it would be useful to shift power as the time of day changed.
This is probably why they have Feng Hsu, NASA's head of Risk Management for Safety and Mission Assurance, at the top of the list of experts they have helping advise the project. While I'll agree with what another poster said, most of the website reads like marketing towards investors, they do at least have some real experts involved and are serious about attempting this.
Personally I hope they succeed (and that they're hiring when I finish school).
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
What is wrong with you people lately? Why the hell is the GP modded troll?
This project is an orbiting white elephant that would take an enourmous amount of energy to build, would supply only a tiny fraction of what we need at a ridiculously high cost per watt, and could easily be percieved as a space based weapon by other nations. If I didn't know better I would have to assume TFA is a lame attempt to discredit the viability of earth bound renewables.
Here is the sales pitch on costs: "The biggest challenge for SBSP is making it work on a commercial level in terms of bottom line," said Sage, "i.e., putting together a business case that would allow the enormous infrastructure costs to be raised, the plan implemented, and then electricity sold at a price that is reasonable. I say 'reasonable' and not just 'competitive' because we're getting into a time where selling energy only on a price basis isn't going to be the criteria for purchase.
This is total bullshit, cost is the ONLY criteria for commercial electricity generation, the fact that the costs to the environment are not accounted for in our current economic system is the problem.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It seems like it could be made pretty safe. Have the receiver constantly sending a keep alive signal back to the satellite as long as the power beam is on target. If the beam drifts off target for any reason, the keep alive stops, and the satellite will stop sending down energy until it can be properly realigned. It does mean that you lose power for a bit, but that's probably preferable to losing power AND nuking some poor schmuck's house.
Space Based Solar Power (SBSP) is an economical way of delivering power to remote locations or areas isolated by war.
To deliver power to a certain places in Iraq and Afghanistan it costs well over $1USD/kWh, not mention the loss of human life.
The pentagon is seriously considering SBSP as a viable way to deliver power to not only these locations, but other places of humanitarian interest.
The technology to deliver and deploy SBSP payloads (for it will take many deployments) already exist. Improvements will undoubtedly be made, and with the hopeful completion of NASA's Ares V cargo launch vehicle SBSP will be economical for the rest of us. (under 20cents(USD)/kWh.)
As for the microwave radiation concern, it is not as scary as commonly depicted. (Can anyone recall the tale of the discovery of microwave radiation as a cooking tool--something to do with a Snickers bar melting in a pocket? [Who the heck carries a Snickers bar in their pocket?]) If the size of the receiving antenna is increased, the power of the transmitted signal may be decreased on a W/m scale. With a transmitter that can 'dither' the signal over a rather wide swath one can abate errors associated with tracking, solar anomalies and human error.
Military applications, however, are not quite as concerned with stray microwave beams.
Do not forget that SBSP is exposed to the sun for 24 hours--no interruptions!
On another note the Japanese are working on developing devices that may convert solar energy to transmittable energy in upwards of 40% efficiency by converting solar power to laser.
100% agreed, and there's no way that the launch costs are going to drop by the 3 orders of magnitude required to make this viable. I presume that his is an effort to extract "stimulus" money while the extracting is good, then fail later out. Someone will end up a millionaire and nobody is going to get any damn space power.
Brett
The "greens" will never let it happen. They already go nuts when a wind turbine wacks the occasional eagle. Can you imagine the "environmental studies" needed to cover FLOCKS of birds flying through the microwave download beam?
Greenpeace: Stopping progress one idea at a time.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Actually, they could combine this project with the space elevator. As long as you have a long tether to a big weight out in space, why not make that weight a power generator and have the cable do double duty as tether and conduit.
J
Yes, because the 'It's doomed to failure!' press release is much better at attracting interest and investors.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
He didn't play SimCity 2000 either.
You know how the latency in a satellite kills that way of communications for gaming, correct? Considering that light travels 180,000 miles per second, and that geostationary satellites are 20,000 miles away minimum, that is a good fraction of a second where the satellite can be knocked out by space debris or what not. Imagine the swath it's aiming at with just a small degree, we are probably talking at least dozens of miles.
OTOH, the energy would be distributed along that entire area, but still.
A rectenna is much cheaper per m^2 than a solar cell.
If SimCity 2000 is anything to go by this venture will result in a massive fire, followed closely by an alien invasion.
> And what about when it breaks? There goes a large fraction of a country's electrical power.
That applies to any power source you can think of. The usual solution is to have some spare capacity to cope with such situations.
A rectenna is much cheaper per m^2 than a solar cell.
And 3 times as efficient.
Am I the only one who doesn't quite see how they intend to make this profitable?
I assume they're planning on geosynchronous orbit (the article mentions they are), since anything else will mean intermittent power and moving collectors. In that case, the typical launch cost is $20,000/kg, and the there are serious total weight restrictions per launch. Solar cells come in two varieties: Heavy and inefficient. Trucking and installation costs of solar cells here on Earth are what, $200/kg, if that?
The big advantage? Something like 3x the total incident power per unit area. Even if they somehow get more power (by utilizing UV light, for example, which the atmosphere mostly absorbs), you can't ignore transmissions losses, which are going to be nontrivial from geosynchronous orbit.
So let me get this straight... they're planning on spending about 100x the cost of a terrestrial system for 3x the power gain? Wow, what a business case! Let me sign right up, I want to buy their stock *NOW* before anyone else gets wind of this!
Even if we're incredibly generous and let them have a 10x reduction in launch costs (wishful thinking), then they're still off by a factor of 3x from matching, let alone beating, terrestrial solar power costs.
And no wait.. I forgot.. they still need a stupid huge ground station to collect the power! So, all that money they saved having to install ground based equipment? Still have to spend it! My back-of-the-envelope maths (probably wrong) is that if they use a 1 mm wavelength microwave beam, they're looking at a receiver over 1 km wide due to diffraction limits. Mmm... cheap.
It's clearly an impossible project announced just to leverage on the green and CO2 buzz to make money.
Wireless power transmission? Not yet possible!
Wired power transmission? Only in low-end comics and sci.fi.
Ground based receiving plant? Not yet designed!
Security? Not even taken into account!
Money from investments and stock markets? Yeah!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Actually, you're wrong, the real question is why the hell are you up there in the first place trying to get power? There are literally thousand of square miles here on earth where you can put solar power panels that are 10,000 times cheaper. Yes, they may drop to 33% efficiency compared to an equivalent panel in space due to atmospheric absorption/reflection of the light. Yes, you may have to clean the solar panels here on earth more often, but there is nothing here that makes up for a 10,000 to 1 installation cost difference.
Until someone can explain that, this whole business model is all pie int he sky BS. This doesn't pass the laugh test.
Oh... and once you handle that hurdle (good luck), THEN you have to deal with the "how do you get it back to earth" question in a way that *maintains* the 3x power advantage you gained by being up there in the first place.
d
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
"Almost 200 million gigawatts of solar energy is beamed towards the Earth every second, which is more energy than our civilization has used since the dawn of the electrical age."
Let's see. 200 million gigawatts * 1 second = 0.2 exajoules. Worldwide energy consumption is on the order of hundreds of exajoules per year.
This article must be using the wrong units somewhere, but I guess that's just the status quo nowadays.
The problem with massive arrays of otherwise unused areas is the lack of global electricity grid to deliver the power from, for example, the desert to where the big cities are without massive losses on the way.
A space based power system has the advantage that the receiver can be placed near (*1) the population centers.
note 1: as near if not nearer than a nuclear power station for example.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
Let's see the practicalities here:
1) Finding funding for building solar panels in space taking into account space insurance, multiple launches, space walk fees by NASA, etc.
2) Microwave power that can possibly fry the contents aluminium cans with wings that fly all over the world? It requires dedicated road to space. That costs money in many ways: First of all congressional critters and senators have to bought to introduce an amendment that would allow FTA and FCC to provide an exemption to existing air occupancy laws. Occupying a particular part of air and space 24x7 requires a lot of changes in laws and that costs money. Senators don't come cheap and with the ultra-clean image Obama is promoting, they are costly.
3) Downtime and Uptime for plugging into grids: Coal and Gas fired stations operate on a 99.9996% uptime. Even though the panels stay above weather, the downstreaming of microwaves are affected by Tornadoes, Winds, Storms, etc., This reduces the uptime. Grids don't like unscheduled downtimes.
4) Changes in Grid: It was set up primarily to draw energy from nearby coal-fired power plants and to provide a steady flow of electricity to customers. It was not intended to incorporate power from remote sources like solar panels and windmills, whose output fluctuates with weather conditions -- variability that demands a far more flexible operation. Translation: Storage and resuppy as capacitors or batteries or even to power compressed CO2 which can turn turbines to produce electricity. Is our Grid flexible?
5) Investment Returns: Investors of today expect quicker returns. Within 3 years max. The microwave alone will take about 5 years to setup not including space launch failures, damages panels and bolts, shuttle politics and ESA confrontation. Oh and i didn't include the cost of litigation to fight off patent challengers, copyright grabbers, and local politicians who would put a chicken in the microwave frying pan and show it to FOX as Fried, thus calling it "dangerous"
6) Enviro Nuts: All it takes would be one endangered spotted owl and an Eagle to be fried in the beam to bring the whole project down. With liberals in control and not republicans, they would surround the project to shut it down AND imprison the scientists who fried the eagle and owl.
7) Price of Oil: As an oil baron reportedly said to GM during the EV-1 days: "We can always drop the price of oil." All it takes for Exxon or BP to do is to drop the price of oil by the exact margin of profit of this solar project. Poof! There goes the investment.
8) OSHA and FCC(again): Damages to telecom networks and mobile systems will be high enough for OSHA to raid the plant. Plus FCC would probably put such a low threshold of voltage, that it would be useless except to power RFID chips in the FCC commissioner's passport.
To conclude, Peter Sage is a naive who has read too many "oil crisis" books and thinks starting and running a business in USA is easy.
Obviously he hasn't done it, yet.
Ask any small business owner in USA who has built a NEW business today.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
The earth atmosphere is quite transparent to what humans usually call light. that is, visible light. a very tiny portion of the spectrum.
But, the sun emit much more than visible light. If you can use UV or higher frequency, or perhaps a wider spectrum, then you get a lot more energy than the equivalent setup on earth.
And, I agree with the other parts. Once you have your nice space-based energy collector, then you have a lot of energy, in space. it would be nice to find a way to take it back to places that use energy, preferably without frying too many birds, planes, satellites, humans, and without having that nice 'death ray from the sky' option in the hand of industrials looking for profit.
But, let's be realist. If some people are ready to invest in so hard to use energy, why would a governement refuse to take a look at an intimidating weapon system ? And the same energy-redirecting system can be used on lower orbit to cover more ground, since you don't need a fixed receptor ...
I'm afraid you're wrong on this one. Low earth orbit is defined as 100 miles to 1240 miles (according to wikipedia). So the *closest* you can possibily get with a satalite is 100 miles... now the problem is that if you're 100 miles above the earth you have to be spinning around the earth at a tremondous speed in order to stay in orbit. This means you can't really aim your power sending beam of whatever (uwave in this stupid article) at a single base station and you've got to be rotating A LOT to keep aiming this at the right spot. Very problematic. You're probably spinning around the planet once every 15 min or so. I don't care what population center you're aiming for, you're only going to be over it for a very short period of time.
Ok... so assume a geosynchronous orbit. This is now muuuuuch worse. You're 26,000 miles from the planet. This is not exactly what I'd call "near" a population center despite the fact that you can now be over it for 24 hours a day. Keep in mind the two cities on this plant can not be more than 12k miles apart.
Real numbers just doesn't back this crazy concept up in any way shape or form.
d
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
Nobody cared during the life of Nikola Tesla.
Although his idea was that everybody/everything would have a collector antenna to tap in. Not very commercial for him, the project was stopped.
Yes, granted the are gigajoules sent the Earth every s, for *free*, its still far to be the salvation from fuel...
Umm, you are so wrong, one of the power plant options was satellite microwave. I remember it clearly, and it's mentioned in the wikipedia entry. Obviously you don't get to build the space based part, just the ground based receiver. As I recall, it was an expensive option and I rarely used it.
Oh no... it's the future.
Let's do the math on this one.
Let's say we want to put up enough PV cells to replace just one largish power plant, say 1GW.
Using conservative estimates, and assuming everything works perfectly the first time, I get a cost per kilowatt-hour of close to $8.
That's mighty steep, like 80 times the going wholesale rate.
The numbers for those interested in such minutea:
watts delivered 1,000,000,000.000
conversion to AC 0.950
DC needed 1,052,631,578.947
uwave to DC 0.850
AC needed 1,238,390,092.879
Receiving ant. Eff 0.750
To recv ant. 1,651,186,790.506
Atm loss 0.900
from sat 1,834,651,989.451
xmt ant eff 0.900
to xmt ant 2,038,502,210.501
uwave gen eff 0.750
DC to uwave gen 2,718,002,947.334
Solar cell eff 0.150
Watts to s cell 18,120,019,648.896
watts per sq meter 1,400.000
avail of light 0.600
watts avg 840.000
sq meters needed 21,571,451.963
weight per sq m 5.000 lbs
cell weight 107,857,259.815
$/lb to geo $5,000.00
cost to lift $539,286,299,074.30
lbs/watt gen 0.010
lbs gen 27,180,029.473
cosrt cells/sq meter $1,000.00
cost cells $21,571,451,962.97
gen cost/watt 1.000
gen cost 2,718,002,947.334
tot cost 563,575,753,984.601
time to build 5.000 yrs
cost of money 5.00%
int factor 0.250
cost fin 704,469,692,480.751
yrs runs 10.000
cost/yr 70,446,969,248.075
kw gen 1,000,000.000
hrs/yr 8,766.000
kwh/yr 8,766,000,000.000
cost/kwh 8.036
current cost/kwh 0.100
overrun factor 80.364
First figure that the cost of putting a kilo in orbit is NOT going to go below $300, period. Not if you're lifting stuff into space with any sort of chemical rocket. So the cost of a kilowatt of SPS power is going to be MUCH higher. OK, you're PV cells are lets say 400% more efficient, but then you also have to build a giant rectenna or 10 and losses beaming power back to Earth then eats up 50% of your efficiency gains, so hey, it is only 10x more expensive than putting it in Nevada!
The other problem is we still have no idea how to build really large structures in space. Obviously it can be done, but anyone who thinks the basic engineering of that solution will not cost 100's of billions of $ is well, another O'Neil, and if he was even order of magnitude on with his numbers it would be happening now. It is a lot harder than people think. It is a lot harder than engineers think (who usually only underestimate by about 300%).
What we need is HUGE quantities of power. The US needs 15 TERAWATTS of renewable energy installed base in the next 20 years. The gating factor is cost, not efficiency. Instead of screwing around for 20 years figuring out how to build it in space, for no clear benefit, we need to just BUILD IT NOW. Time is a wasting.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
watts per second measures a change in power not energy. In other words, the 2nd derivative of energy with respect to time. Power (e.g., measured in watts) is the 1st derivative of energy with respect to time.
Only his tendency toward a dazed stupor prevented him from screaming aloud.
There are NOT MASSIVE LOSSES IN THE GRID! "Although losses in the national grid are low, there are significant further losses in onward electricity distribution to the consumer, causing a total distribution loss of about 7.7%.[6] However losses differ significantly for customers connected at different voltages; connected at high voltage the total losses are about 2.6%, at medium voltage 6.4% and at low voltage 12.2%.[7]"
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Grid_(UK)
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
I do see one potential problem nobody seems to be talking about. If you raise cattle on the same land being used for a rectenna array, after a few generations I'm pretty sure they would start firing laser beams out of their eyes and try to take over the planet.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
The weapon abuse is small, since turning a massive satellite takes time.
So don't turn the satellite. Turn the emitter.
First, we assume a spherical limitless energy source in the sky...
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
The estimates I've seen put the lifespan more within 20 years, which is too short to make an economic case.
Like GPS, the first group to do SBSP is probably going to be the military, since they have reasons for getting power into remote areas that aren't strictly economic.
Not a typewriter
I don't think latency would be an issue. You don't need to time stamp the signal, just hear it. From the satellite point of view the break in signal would be instantaneous once it lost line of sight, even if that signal spent 2000ms to get there.
Pessimists.net - as if life wasn't depressing enough.
All we have to do is put a gigaton or so of unobtainium into geosynchronous orbit and then weave a cable 35,000 miles long out of it, lower it to the Earth, and then figure out how to make a vehicle that can climb a cable for 35,000 miles.
Worse yet, if we fail it is a serious problem. We can't even build suspension bridges with 100% reliability. Whoever thinks we're going to build a beanstalk right on the first try is probably wrong.
I put beanstalks into the 'who knows what might be possible in a century or two' category. Even if we DID know how to make one it would likely take decades or more to build it.
(there are better ideas than beanstalks, launch lines and fountains come to mind).
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson