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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.
Just disable HAVE_WEAPON_SUPPORT flag in configure.in before building the sw for the space power station.
"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?
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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.
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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