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Beamed Space Solar Power Plant To Open In 2016?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the duck-duck-burn dept.

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.

4 of 512 comments (clear)

  1. In Space by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In space nobody can hear your company go bankrupt.

    There will be a lot of pissed off investors on Earth though.

    1. Re:In Space by QuoteMstr · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Ah, environmentalists:

      Reasonable people: Let's use this wonderful new technology!
      Environmentalists: No way! It's dangerous!
      Reasonable people: Err, no it's not. The technology is based on well-understood principles we've been using for decades.
      Environmentalists: But how do you know that this particular combination of principles won't cause some damage! You have to prove it. Do you have any evidence that this technology doesn't hurt anything?
      Reasonable people: Okay, we'll humor you. Let's run an experiment.
      Environmentalists: No testing! We don't know whether this technology is safe! You might hurt someone or something!

      Come on. You should know better. We know what microwaves do at the energy densities indicated. We have absolutely no reason to believe they might cause wide-scale changes to ecosystems. The burden of proof is on you to show that there is actually a harmful effect.

    2. Re:In Space by gnuotaku · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You can tell an environmentalist had mod points because this is modded troll. The fact is though, we *do* understand microwaves pretty damn well. I'd say we understand them better than a lot of other physical phenomena (I'm a physics undergrad). His point about the environmentalists is spot on. It happens all the time: look at nuclear power plants. Chernobyl _could never happen again_, but that's flaunted around by all those do-gooder enviros. And the truth is that we understand nuclear plants pretty damn well, and we build extremely safe ones now. But that's not enough. The environmentalists hurt the environment more by stifling innnovation than any amount of space power satellites ever would. Hell, more birds die from collisions with planes and high rises, but no one is calling for us to ban those. It's FUD, and it's bullshit. These are the same people that are cheering on wind energy: hate to break it to you, but wind mills are far more dangerous to birds and wildlife than a microwave beam.

  2. Re:Look on the bright side... by daveime · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I just love this kind of objection.

    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?

    So digging / drilling coal and oil out of the ground, and all the processing, transportation and generation infrastructure involved in fossil fuels cost nothing ?

    I think the important point is, *once* the infrastructure for these new renewable energy forms is in place, the power itself comes at zero cost ... wind, sun and water costs nothing ... and doesn't involve the clean up that say coal, oil or nuclear does.

    How to decommission a space based reflector ? Switch the thing off. Done. For extra good measure, fit a booster rocket to it, so we can fire it off into deep space once we're done with it.

    A far cry from safely storing materials with a half life of 10,000 years, or getting rid of all the carbon dioxide we've pumped into the atmosphere in the last 150 years dues to coal and oil.