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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?
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!
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%.
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
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.
I asked this question of an Environmental Physicist. The answer is that it will *prevent* global warming. The reasoning is this:
Right now, we primarily burn coal to produce energy. This isn't an efficient process at all, putting out about 30% energy and 70% heat. Also, there are all the waste products dumped into the atmosphere associated with burning coal. Meanwhile, beaming the energy back to the Earth will (theoretically) be very, very efficient, as in almost all the energy beamed back will be reclaimed as electricity. Replacing coal with this method would reduce the overall heat by 70%.
So yes, this idea will heat the Earth, but not nearly as much as coal. As far as causing other weather changes, health problems, and electronic problems, those are possibilities that are unknown until they try it. The signal should be directed quite precisely to their receiver on Earth, and with any intelligence, they will have a safety system such that the beam shuts off immediately if the receiver notices a dip in power.
Yes, since the world ends in 2012 anyway this claim is ridiculous.
I love my sig.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.