Slashdot Mirror
Beamed Space Solar Power Plant To Open In 2016?
Eric_S writes "Anybody who managed to get a decent city going in Sim City 2000 remembers the microwave power plant; now it seems like a real-world equivalent might be coming up on the horizon.
The Pacific Gas and Electricity Company, per this 'interview' with the CEO of Solaren on their affiliated site, announced PG&E's plans to buy 200MW of base-load power from a Solaren beamed space solar power plant by 2016." I wish the skeptic in me would be quiet.
In space nobody can hear your company go bankrupt.
There will be a lot of pissed off investors on Earth though.
... even if they haven't got a clue as to how financially reckless they're being. You kind of have to admire that.
[off topic] You can make the world's largest microwave oven... [/off topic]
I noticed this little tid bit:
200 megawatts of clean, renewable power over a 15 year period.
How much does that compare to the energy needed for getting it up in space, getting routine maintenance & repair up in space, the maintenance & repair itself, and possible decommissioning?
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
Then again perhaps we can use an albatross to lift this system into orbit as we certainly lack launch capacity for almost anything right now.
What exactly is the issue with diversifying our efforts? There is no rule that states we can only work on one type of technology at a time. I'm tired of all of this "we shouldn't be doing X before we do Y" crap.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Everybody wins!
For specific kinds of applications, yes, there is demand. DARPA is interested in this, because electronics use, and there fore electricity use, by the military has expanded tremendously, even in remote locations. A diesel generator has to receive a constant supply of fuel. This is very expensive and inconvenient on the top of a mountain in Afghanistan. A solar power receiving station doesn't. The power supply is invulnerable to attack. The receiving station doesn't make constant noise. In such contexts, power delivered at rates an order of magnitude higher than commercial generation is very competitive.
Invulnerable, huh?
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
The Environmentalist's Fallacy
It goes something like this:
In reality, X produces far less overall pollution than Y.
I've seen this argument used to oppose:
All of these are great technologies. If we're ever to make any progress, we have to learn to think past the environmentalist's fallacy.
how do you collimate the beam tightly enough that it doesn't spread out and you lose most of the power?
You don't. You use a rectenna (basically just a grid of metal) spread over farm fields, with plenty of light getting through to grow crops underneath.
Not a typewriter
That report is heavily biased, and overlooks details like the fact that microwave ovens are rated as such becasue the don't run for extended periods of time.
The exposure time from a beamed microwave signal will be for an extended period.
It also overlooks the fact that the math doesn't seem to add up.
None of that matter, becasue it is cost prohibitive compared to earth based solution.
For the cost of the launch alone, you could build a 200MW Solar thermal plant and have enough money to light cigars with 100 bills for the rest of your life.
This will die and the oil companies will shrug and say "Hey, we tried."
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You mean the laws of physics prevent the system from generating a beam without the ground reflector? I don't think so.
Explain it or I call bullshit. To be honest, I'll probably still call bullshit, but you deserve a chance anyway.
Translation: "I am already locked into believing that this technology is dangerous, and no matter how much solid scientific evidence you provide to the contrary, I will continue to believe that."
And for the record, the GP is right: without the reflection from the ground station, the transmitter cannot form a coherent beam.
Dislike the Electoral College? Lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
He's right:
For practical purposes, a geosynchronous orbit's solar irradiation is close enough to constant that it doesn't matter. If your satellite is actually solar thermal, then it really doesn't matter.
Hell, the mains power goes out more often than that here in Buffalo, NY.
I think there are some national security implications inherent in relocating all of Europe's electric power generation capacity to Africa. I hope nobody in Africa minds European armies building bases there to guard their energy sources.
We've lived with radio waves all over the place for over a century. Countless studies have shown that electromagnetic radiation produces no deleterious effects. The burden of proof is on you to come up with repeatable experiments providing evidence for falsifiable claims that radio waves are harmful at the levels proposed.
Hookers and blow BEFORE the world ends, dude. That's where.
Let's not forget PCBs and DDT and Mercury based felt hats and lead paint as all things that were WIDELT beleived to be safe and a boon to mankind until they turned out not to be.
Id say the jury is still out on long term problems with cell phones and powerlines. People are only now rethinking the subtle effects of heat islands produced by cities. And there's some concern that the plasticizers in water bottles is now showing up in human organs.
It was not long ago people figured out some animals use magnetic fields and polarized light to navigate. Just to make something up, suppose that polarized microwave transimission were to interferre with that. Perhaps indirectly. for example an oscillating dipole can orient molecules even if they don't strictly speaking absorb. Light scattering off oriented molecules in turn can get polarized. I'm not saying this is a problem. I'm just saying it's pretty glib to say "bah, there's no harm is such a massive experiment"
We don't know why things like asthma and toxic allergies seem to be on the rise in children. Over diagnosis seems to not be the problem so presumably their are systemic origins like say plasticizers we have yet to discover.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
"We know the distance"
Pointlessly distant. We know the distance to geosyncronous orbit too.
"we know it's movements"
We know the movements of geosynchronous satellites too.
"it doesn't involve putting up more floating space junk"
You mean besides the discarded booster rockets needed to get such a ridiculously further distance out just so we can deal with the difficulties of an additional gravity well?
"it's surface is always facing the sun"
If by "always", you mean half the time - 14 days out of every 28.
"unlike a synchronous satalite, would be our of the sun for at least a few hours"
If by "a few hours" you mean "about an hour a night, but only for a short period every six months near the equinox"
"(depending on distance) "
Did I say "we" knew the distance to geosynchronous? Well, I do.
I was going to go on, questioning why you imagine there would be any question of beaming during a new moon vs a lunar eclipse. But whatever conception of orbital mechanics you're working with I can't even make enough sense of it to mock.
Given how much space there is, and how much matter there is (that is, enough to, at a reasonable density, fill up only a really teensy fraction of the space), it seems unlikely that we could "fill up space" with anything.
And, really, until you've created a Dyson swarm or Dyson bubble, which should keep you occupied a long time, I don't see what your issue is here as far as what to do once you've built out to capacity with space-based solar power.
Actually, all of thsoe are problems. Cooling in space is nontrivial (vacuum doesn't give you a medium to carry away heat, so you are restricted to radiating heat), you still have to do something with spent fuel, and -- since orbitting things have a history of deorbiting -- NIMBY concerns are still a problem, but just not a local problem, since you can't narrow down the area at risk of (unlikely, perhaps, but that doesn't stop NIMBY concerns) catastrophe in that event.
You're off by a considerable margin there. LEO launch costs are a couple thousand dollars per pound, with GEO launches about ten times that. The weight of a space based system can be considerably less than a ground based system. You don't need heavy mirrors or solar panels, and protective structures needed to hold their own weight, as well as hold up to high winds, storms, sand erosion, and other maintenance issues. You would stretch out very thin, high albedo Mylar fabric over a collapsing frame, with a couple strategically placed collectors. You could easily cover several thousand square meters (generating a couple MW) with something the weight of an average telecommunications satellite.
You're going to run into a couple problems. The Mylar sheet will be subject to micrometeorite damage, and over time will have to be replaced. You would have to occasionally launch replacements, and design some robotic system capable of stretching the new fabric in place. Your thermal collectors will have to operate at very high temperatures, in order to be able to dump that amount of power through your radiators. You're probably looking at a liquid sodium pump like you see in compact reactors.
In the end, you're looking at free power with relatively low maintenance costs, for a couple billion dollars up front. However with current energy costs, you're also looking at a decade or two before you hit black. Contrast this with a traditional solar power plant of that capacity that would cost maybe half a billion dollars.
On the opposite side, the space based solar plant offers a number of advantages over the ground based one. In geostationary orbit, you provide power for most of the day, entering full shadow for only one hour at night. This makes it much more like a base load plant, rather than peak load. It is also much more consistent power, not having to worry about cloud cover. On a cloudy day, the transmitter could just be redirected towards another ground station. In addition, ground stations can be scattered much more locally, allowing reduced distribution costs.