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This Satellite Could Be Beaming Solar Power Down From Space By 2025
Daniel_Stuckey writes "A NASA veteran, aerospace entrepreneur, and space-based solar power (SBSP) expert, [John] Mankins designed the world's first practical orbital solar plant. It's called the Solar Power Satellite via Arbitrarily Large PHased Array, or SPS-ALPHA for short. If all goes to plan, it could be launched as early as 2025, which is sooner than it sounds when it comes to space-based solar power timelines. Scientists have been aware of the edge the "space-down" approach holds over terrestrial panels for decades. An orbiting plant would be unaffected by weather, atmospheric filtering of light, and the sun's inconvenient habit of setting every evening. SBSP also has the potential to dramatically increase the availability of renewable energy."
Here's some hard numbers on "traditional" approaches to solar ground vs space:
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/03/space-based-solar-power/
"You can even throw in batteries in the ground system without exceeding the space cost, and all the reasons for going to space have melted away."
It would be interesting if TFA had some hard numbers to compare against in terms of generation capacity vs launch costs vs upkeep/replacement schedule... Can't find anything myself though...