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PG&E Makes Deal For Solar Power From Space
N!NJA writes "California's biggest energy utility announced a deal Monday to purchase 200 megawatts of electricity from a startup company that plans to beam the power down to Earth from outer space, beginning in 2016. Solaren would generate the power using solar panels in Earth orbit and convert it to radio-frequency transmissions that would be beamed down to a receiving station in Fresno, PG&E said. From there, the energy would be converted into electricity and fed into PG&E's power grid."
As long as you turn off disasters, beamed solar energy is actually a fairly cost effective power solution.
That's just a bonus.
Who ordered that?
Just disable HAVE_WEAPON_SUPPORT flag in configure.in before building the sw for the space power station.
Yes. But as the Russians found out - any energy source can be used as a weapon. The more people are dependent on it, the better. And such usage doesn't even involve violence - just mention that there might be some service disruptions, outages, etc, if you don't get your way.
"PG&E Makes Deal For Solar Power From Space"
Is there any other kind?
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
I'm sorry, maybe it's too early in the morning for my brain to be working, but could you be a little more specific about what you consider the downside to be?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The effects of microwave radiation on high density airborne smug are still unknown
how long until
The solar constant is about 1.4 kW/m^2 in Earths orbit. I fail to see how they want to produce 200 MW with significantly less than 0.2 km^2 of collector area. Care to explain it to me?
couldn't this also be used as a weapon?
"Tonight we had a most unfortunate accident. A micrometeor hit the satellite, changing it's orientation. The accident, unfortunately, destroyed a coal plant. Again.
Oh, by the way. We're raising the prices 25%."
I'd be interested to know what effect it would have on an airport for example.
The in-flight meals would be warm for once. Now, if only someone could work out a way of beaming flavour from a satellite...
Blank until
These beaming systems have interlocks pointed back from the ground receiver to the satellite. If the two get out of alignment, the satellite immediately loses the ground signal, and immediately stops transmitting.
Besides, the beamed power density doesn't have to be very high per square meter. If it's just concentrated 5x from its density in space, it's 6.5KW:m^2. At this system's 2MW transmission rate, is only 308m^2, or a square 17.5m on a side. If it's really RF, even if the interlock failsafe failed, the beam wouldn't do much except fry some unshielded electronics in the way until something else shut it down. I'm sure the multiple layers of government regulators will ensure a lot of "deadman switches" to stop the only thing that everyone guesses could go wrong.
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make install -not war
"couldn't this also be used as a weapon?"
No, it will never get off the ground.
Having said that, Solaren's web site is all about down to earth renewable projects. The 200MW of power the power company has pledged to buy is the equivalent of 40 commercial windmills. My guess is this is a "foot in the door" deal that cost neither party a cent but Solaren now know what the power company are willing to pay. Using this knowledge they can go back at a later date and convert the pie-in-the-sky pledge into a purchase from a normal wind/solar farm that will do the same thing for the same predetermined price.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The problem is that a laser beam doesn't go any faster than light speed, either.
The satellite would have to determine on its own whether it's still pointing the right way.
That's why I specified that the *receiver* have a very limited field of vision. If the satellite rotates enough to be off target, it can no longer see the laser. Thus no latency issues.
Don't tell me to get a life. I had one once. It sucked.
They also thought Detriot would be a wastekand of crime and poverty and everyone would drive oversized cars.
Fools...
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
Buying desert land isn't "astronomically expensive". It's about the cheapest land there is. There happens to be huge deserts of dirt-cheap (cheaper: sand-cheap) land all around California. Besides, this 2MW satellite probably doesn't even need more than about 25m^2 to receive its beam at 5x solar density. If they wanted to be really safe, they probably could diffuse it over 2500m^2, for 5W:m^2, which doesn't hurt anyone.
The efficiency here is the 30% extra incoming solar power that is otherwise lost in the atmosphere (minus some small lost amount they're tuning the beam to minimize), times the 24/7 uptime instead of about 25% terrestrial due to night/weather/seasons. That's a starting point of 520%. But the other advantage is the much larger area that thin collector sheets can cover in space. Launching costs money per mass, but the collectors can unfurl across kilometers. And the maintenance costs in microgravity/femtopressure are much lower over years, despite the remoteness. After the large initial costs, the ongoing costs per watt are extremely low.
2MW would require only about 40x40m collectors. A square kilometer collector would bring 1.3GW. The geosync satellite beaming to Fresno could receive from collectors in all kinds of other orbits pointing at the hub. This infrastructure could conceivably bring all 17TW of Earth's energy consumption into a series of ground stations from only about 114*114 Km of collectors. A few score hubs around the equator each using a few dozen GW lasers could replace all the coal currently burned for stationary power. The sky is literally the limit.
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make install -not war
During most of the year, geostationary satellites spend 100% of the time in sunlight. During "eclipse season" (which happens around the spring/fall equinoxes), they get eclipsed, for a few minutes up to about 70 (at the peak of the season). A discussion of this can be found here: http://celestrak.com/columns/v04n09/
During those times, you could redirect from another satellite, use an alternative power source (batteries, capacitors, fueled generators, etc), and/or have a "brownout". Power outages suck, but if you're in a place where conventional power sources are unavailable/impractical/infeasable, it's better than nothing.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
Everyone does that every day. It's called the sun. That's where this thing gets its energy from. However, there is a key difference between solar radiation, and the radiation that this machine produces. The reason that we have solar frequencies converted to this frequency, is because it interacts close to nothing with the atmosphere, or just about any organic particle/interference. A lot of matter interacts with very specific frequencies, which is why this frequency will only give power to the designated material. Think of an atom as a football at the center of the stadium. The electrons would be like flies in the bleachers. Now if you want to hit the flies with bullets, you have to aim to where they generally are, or you'll miss. It works kinda like that.
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