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.
Because the people over there are pretty progressive on the green energy front, and if there are any problems it will be over San Francisco.
Why do I picture human-sized ants under a magnifying glass when the beam shifts a little.
... even if they haven't got a clue as to how financially reckless they're being. You kind of have to admire that.
While this kind of power beaming technology is possible, I can't imagine that it's all that efficient. Are we really low enough on other forms of power that there will be enough demand to support this kind of remote endeavor?
I'd be concerned with maybe its effects on the weather, maybe global warming. Also, this could affect radio communications on Earth. Or perhaps not, since it probably would operate off of a different frequency. Personally I think that geothermal energy is still a method of energy production that has yet to be tapped on a more massive scale. Why put up satellites and beam power back to Earth when we have excellent sources of power here?
Proudly posting without RTFA.
My mirror up there in the sky got dinked by a marble sized piece of green cheese and burned up your crop. But don't worry about green, in paper form, cheese form or your crops because you won't be needing those eyes as you looked up at the unusual shiny bright thingy.
Ah, that's one way to get a quick tan I'm sure.
We could sell time in it to celebrities.
Or just run animals* through for quick roast dinners.
* or celebrities
Memo from the United States
... I heard Mexico is very jealous.
... but look on the bright side--there sure the hell ain't no zebra mussels left in there now!
February 12th, 2020
Dear Canada,
Yesterday a piece of space trash knocked our Microwave Power Plant operating over Oregon off target from its station. Unfortunately, it continued to beam a strong powerful ray of energy down as its sights fell over your Western provinces. We are sorry.
We urge you not to think of it as "a swath of destruction" so much as "a wicked cool tattoo"
Williston Lake was a very beautiful lake right up until it evaporated
We're also sorry that instead of shutting it down, we just swung it back over Canada to its power station in Oregon and next time we will totally just stop it before this happens. To make up for it, we'll send you some extra power so your people stop rioting and Mad Maxing.
We hope there's no hard feelings,
Sincerely,
The United States
My work here is dung.
This is Sim Copter 1 reporting heavy casualties...
From the Wikipedia article linked:
"In 1964, William C. Brown demonstrated a miniature helicopter equipped with a combination antenna and rectifier device called a rectenna."
Heh, rectenna sounds like some alien probing device.
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
Tagged: turnoffdisasters.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.
We should build something like the Iraqi Super-cannon. The thing was built out of 70's tech and was slated to deliver stuff to orbit for $600/Kg. We could improve on that with new tech and mass production of the rocket-boosted projectiles. Construction materials for SPS could be packaged to survive the G's of being shot out of a cannon. Even electronic components could be built to survive. The US government has specs for electronic components that can survive 100,000 G. (Yes, one hundred thousand!) That would make SPS much cheaper.
It's a power source and a weapon in one! Don't F with us or we'll turn our eco-friendly power beam on you!
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
I think I remember seeing a search feature, here on /., _pixels_ ago.
Who's going to be the first to use it? You? Me?
The suspense is terrible.... I hope it lasts.
Satellite in geostable orbit. Receiving station on equator. Receiving station emits guiding signal to satellite, causing satellite to beam power to earth. If the guiding signal is missing, the satellite stops beaming power and starts using that power to adjust it's position. That's how I'd do it.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Because you haven't run the numbers on the beam power density. The Microwave beam is wide, because it's trivial and cheap to make a huge ground antenna, and because agriculture can be carried out under the antenna. THe beam power density can be held down to just a few times noon sunlight power, and still deliver plenty of energy.
That way, both airplane and albatross are safe to transit the beam area.
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
But this hare-brained idea will heat the atmosphere
Fail.
Most power generation schemes are *heat engines.* The typical efficiency is less than 40%. Microwave transmission starts at 50% efficiency, and is likely to get better. For the same amount of electric power, you're going to have less waste heat than with coal, nuclear, or natural gas power plants.
[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
This is a dupe of http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/04/14/0317236/PGampE-Makes-Deal-For-Solar-Power-From-Space. They announced this in April.
Hell, the linked interview in summary is in the original story from MSNBC.com. This submission contains nothing new to add...
Based on Wolfram Alpha the Earth gets about 1.3 kW per square meter. with the earth being 6.4*10^6 m radius with find the area facing the sun is pi*r^2 = 1.28*10^14. Multiplied by the power gives 1.67*10^17 W hitting the earth. Now since the power company wants to sell 2*10^8 W of power we can conclude that the extra energy reaching the Earth would be in the region of 0.0000001%.
Assuming everything goes well and this becomes a viable source of energy What stops any oil producing nation from blowing it up?
as it is eaten so it shall pass
It's not just the lack of night, but not having the atmosphere block out a lot of light before it hits your solar cells.
Sim City was fiction. The microwave beams here aren't concentrated enough to be useful as any sort of weapon, either purposely or accidental. The frequencies choosen need to be transparent to water (since it'll have to cut through a lot of it to get to the surface), and the "beam" is spread over a wide area to make simple rectenna receivers possible.
Not a typewriter
Folks like the US military are interested. It's expensive to ship fuel for generators to remote outposts. At those prices for power, SPS are competitive. You also get to remove one logistics vulnerability.
A bit more subtle: The transmitter is using a phased array, and the locking phase is a reflection of the signal from the ground. This is a completely fail-safe system: It doesn't have a machine that says "reference signal gone": if the reference signal disappears, the beam turns into a glow by the laws of physics, not by any allegedly safe automation. And the beam can *only* be aimed at something with an appropriate reflector, so even a mad scientist cannot redirect the beam to a city.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
The problem with that is the cold end - it is actually rather difficult to dump heat in space, since you are rather well vacuum insulated. You need a very big radiator, shielded from the sun (presumably by your primary mirror). Which brings the mass required back up again.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Yes, since the world ends in 2012 anyway this claim is ridiculous.
I love my sig.
Yeah, the power you got from it was low. Fusion was the way to go!
Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling a pig in the mud. After a while, you realize the engineer enjoys it.
If we build it, Scotty will come!
Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling a pig in the mud. After a while, you realize the engineer enjoys it.
Actually, no, it won't heat the atmosphere significantly.
"Atmospheric heating from microwave loss" is another word for "atmospheric attenuation". The trick is you choose microwave frequencies that are not significantly absorbed by nitrogen, oxygen, and water (dihydrogen monoxide), and that knocks out your atmospheric attenuation problem right there.
This is Physics 102, people.
Your real losses are going to be in beamforming and beam wander. You fix beam wander by using a BIG receiving antenna (which also lets you use low power density in the beam: win-win).
Actually, isn't the satellite simply intercepting the energy that would have made it to the Earth anyhow?
If this system has about a 50% efficiency, then isn't this satellite actually blocking the other 50% of said energy from actually ever reaching the earth?
Still #1 -- Lonely Gay Geek
So, the gigantic effort to put this solar plant into orbit will create... 200MW of power?
Contrast to this: 0.3% of the Sahara could power the whole of Europe
It's expensive like hell, sure, but it would start delivering energy long before it's completed and its goals are way more ambitious than this flying solar panel's! Think no more unrenewable energy, no more CO2, no more pollutants (sulphur, heavy metals etc.) from coal plants, no more soil erosion due to dams, no more gas or oil (yeah, in italy they have plenty of those) power plants. Only a few windfarms and perhaps the French nuclear plants to iron out the energy needs during night time.
Don't tell me the USA has a lack of sun and deserts.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Either a "few times noon sunlight" is a lot, or it isn't.
You can't bash the idea as both "dangerously hot/bright" and "too cold/dark for practical use".
Sun at noon can easily generate temperatures over 40C - if a "few times" that is 2.5 or higher, then you're over boiling point of water.
You can harvest that energy using 19th century means - like steam engine.
That WOULD be quite dangerous, though. No need to argue there.
If "few times" is lower than 1.5 - those are temperature extremes observed in nature. Granted, in places like Death Valley or Libya but still - up to 58C is natural.
A tad uncomfortable, but unless you plan to step into the ray naked and just stand there for prolonged periods of time - quite harmless.
If it is somewhere between 1.5 and 2.5, that is in the area of boiling eggs (and other things made out of protein, like skin).
Probably very uncomfortable conditions for living creatures but quite usable levels of energy.
Hey! If you can boil an egg, you are surely getting enough energy to do some other things. Again, you don't need to go further than 19th century - just substitute water for something that boils at lower temperature.
And besides, nobody forces you to stick to the 19th century. So, those energy levels are quite usable.
Even just 100% of noon sunlight is a lot - considering that modern solar is way bellow that. And we ARE using solar.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Yes, invulnerable. There's a huge difference between hitting a satellite in low earth orbit and geosynchronous orbit, which is a few times higher up and which requires a lot more delta-v to reach.
You are right, the Solaren CEO does say it would be in geosynchronous orbit.
My bad. I was wrong, you were right.
"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.
I've noticed over my life, that incredible claims of new ways to deal with energy issues are '7 years out'.
BlackLight Power back in 2000 were claiming a 'battery the size of a briefcase that can power an electric car 1000 miles' as an example.
Now, here we have this new claim.
Yet these people point out that the energy here on earth from one of the downlinks is only 2X that of regular old PV.
URSI White Paper on Solar Power Satellite (SPS) Systems
So whom to believe? A guy seeking venture capital OR a bunch of wet blanket boffins?
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
Luckily, I do, after a quick Wikipedia check on the Sun...
Actually, that's 1.368 kW/m^2 in orbit. In the form of sunlight.
I presume you're surprised by now, since it's not, in fact, "a few (at least) orders of magnitude higher"?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
The reason is that currently, the western militia there must import lots of fuel to provide electricity. That is EXPENSIVE. VERY EXPENSIVE. Instead, the groups could put up one of these that have say 5-50 MW and then put small collectors on the ground. It would be MUCH cheaper than bringing in the equipment and fuel. In addition, if a base is overrun, it would be easy to prevent enemy (read Al Qaeda) from using the equipment and new equipment would be much lighter, easier to take care of, etc. Also, once several of these were up there, they could be shifted around to help on Emergency locations. For example, helping Hurricanes, tsunami, Chinese EarthQuake, 9/11, etc. The ability to get power into a large disaster area means, LITERALLY life or death. If we put at least one over every major continent, they could be used normally to help a city that already has coal/gas, but then moved ahead of time for when a disaster is heading there way (hurricanes), or a day or two for unseen disasters that happen. Heck, if done right, private space industry should push this private tugs. These can then be used for doing other work (perhaps getting rid of space junk).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If you're talking about attitude of a spacecraft in orbit, then as a matter of fact, there are purely electric systems: magnetic torquers. Lots of satellites use them, including Hubble.
Changing electrical energy into thrust? You got it. Space agencies have been using it for years. And, as an added bonus, it makes a neat blue glow when you do it!
End of lesson. You may press the button.
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.
They must have some big economies somewhere they aren't talking about to make this profitable.
Seastead this.
No, they cause all the transmitters to drift out of phase, so that instead of a coherent beam, you have a wide-angle glow. Transmission is done by a phased-array antenna, as used on most modern radar systems. If these all transmit in a carefully calculated phase relationship, interference directs all the energy into a tight beam. If the phase between the transmitters is random, which it will become if not positively locked to a reference beam, all interference disappears and the energy is dissipated in all directions. All you have to do is ensure that the reference phase is derived not from on board, but from the ground: when the reference beam disappears the transmitters lose phase and the beam broadens into nothing. The transmitters will probably lose lock easily anyway, but you can deliberately unstable if you want. To start the system requires someone on the ground to fire a fairly powerful beam from the target area up to the satellite; to maintain it requires a well-aligned reflector.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Satellite in geostable orbit. Receiving station on equator. Receiving station emits guiding signal to satellite, causing satellite to beam power to earth. If the guiding signal is missing, the satellite stops beaming power and starts using that power to adjust it's position. That's how I'd do it.
That's nice and all, but how about this: If the beam goes off-target, the satellite cranks the output up to full power, obliterating whatever it happens to be pointed at. This will create a bright column of light visible to cameras at the receiving station. Based on which direction this shaft of annihilation is from the station, the ground station transmits instructions to the satellite of which way to adjust the beam, walking it back onto the target and creating a massive swath of destruction in the process.
That's how I'd do it.
Still the economics of this are a bit puzzling. In 2008, California used 285 million megawatt-hours of electricity, so even if this project could generate 200 MW 24x7 that still comes to just 511,000 megawatt-hours per year, or a little under 0.2% of Californian consumption. At a wholesale price of $50 per megawatt-hour, that would earn Solaren about $25 million per year. Even over the fifteen year projected lifespan that comes to just $375 million (actually less if you take inflation into account). Is $375 million anywhere near what the actual cost of this project will be? Space engineers, please help here.
Hookers and blow BEFORE the world ends, dude. That's where.
That ionizes Xenon gas to produce the thrust, you still need the fuel which is the gas. That is changing electrical energy and a fuel into thrust.
I want a purely electrical one, no gas, nothing consumed like ablating a surface.
Plus the ion engine dont have enough newton impulse to do station keeping for a satellite. at least the last time I looked at them they did not.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.
A phased-array antenna at 2.45 GHz still has a rather wide beam. I would say that a parabolic reflector has a narrower beam than a phased-array antenna - especially at 2.45 GHz. If this were operating at a higher frequency, then sure, you can get a pretty tight beam, but then you start having other atmospheric absorption problems. Rain would be terrible at just about any higher frequency, not to mention oxygen and nitrogen also start absorbing the higher in frequency you go.
Plus - a really tight beam has many negative problems - if you keep a really high power density - the lower air pressure in upper parts of the atmosphere are likely to form plasma. The electric-field strength due to the high power density can cause that flash over to occur, and once that plasma forms - oh shit - all sorts of weird things can happen. The plasma can start reflecting RF energy, it can just keep absorbing it, and it may even let some through - but it's more likely to reflect or absorb once the plasma is formed.
Any way - back to the phased array thing - the main benefit of phased-array transmitters is the ability to steer the beam with no moving parts.
Works great for radar systems - less so - in my opinion for microwave power transfer.
This company really just needs to launch a test satellite first, but you would want to test it at a very high power density, because that's what's needed, as that's when all the weird effects start to happen. Lots of ground experiments would need to be performed, but even then - the whole thing could get launched, and some unforeseen consequence happens, and we've just wasted billions upon billions of dollars.
"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.
Maybe we can build them safely, but maintenance is another issue. This is the same plant that almost went postal in 1985. See http://www.cleveland.com/powerplants/plaindealer/index.ssf?/powerplants/more/1095759100318143.html for just one reference.
Somehow I think I'm being trolled, but let's clear these up anyhow.
1. With the horror stories about living near power lines, and cell phone usage, what possibke problems could a massive beam of energy blasting from overhead cause?
As those are all false, it's a non-issue.
2. Terrorist with a simple transmitter causing the beam to come down into a nearby city.
Terrorists with a transmitter with enough power to focus a basically harmless beam into a nearby city instead of, I don't know, just using a bomb to blow shit up are hardly a credible threat. Nice movie plot, though.
3. How to you intend on using a power beam to adjust a satellites position, without blasting random sites on the earth? I doubt you can make manouver as necessary without pointing the beam in all directions.
Physics not your strong point? Don't feel bad, most people aren't physicists. But you should avoid expressing strong opinions about what's physically possible when you lack any understanding whatsoever of the mechanism being discussed.
4. You have your power at the equator. Now what? Load it on a boat it to Canada where it's needed? 2000 miles of wire with minimal losses?
The power recieving station does not need to be directly beneath the satellite, though lattitudes as high as Canada start to be an efficiency problem, LA shouldn't be a big deal.
5. If you're worried about global warming right now, how will you feel about massive amounts of energy pumped into the atmosphere every day? You cannot send a beam through the air without affecting it. ...
OK, being bad a physics is no excuse for this one. All power used becomes heat in the environment. The sum of all power used by humans is a very tiny fraction of the total solar energy that hits the planet naturally. It's a complete non-issue. Buring fossil fuels have a very leveraged effect on global warming (if you believe the hypothesis) because of the CO2 released - the waste heat is nothing by comparison. So if you care about global warming, shouldn't you support/I. the 1x heat option over the 10000x heat option?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.