Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Renewables in their current form are a nonsense solution to the world’s energy needs. However, there is a combination of technologies which could make solar power a significant, reliable contributor to the World’s energy needs. But I doubt any green will rush to embrace it.
How do we make solar power reliable? The problems which make solar power unreliable are mainly related to weather – clouds, rain, snow, winter, poor air quality, anything which interrupts the flow of light reaching the collector.
The solution is to put the solar panels beyond the reach of all these problems – by putting them into orbit. Launching solar panels into orbit might sound far fetched, but it is being seriously considered by a number of national space programmes.
Space-based solar power (SBSP) is the concept of collecting solar power in space (using an “SPS”, that is, a “solar-power satellite” or a “satellite power system”) for use on Earth. It has been in research since the early 1970s.
SBSP would differ from current solar collection methods in that the means used to collect energy would reside on an orbiting satellite instead of on Earth’s surface. Some projected benefits of such a system are a higher collection rate and a longer collection period due to the lack of a diffusing atmosphere and night time in space.
Part of the solar energy (55–60%) is lost on its way through the atmosphere by the effects of reflection and absorption. Space-based solar power systems convert sunlight to microwaves outside the atmosphere, avoiding these losses, and the downtime (and cosine losses, for fixed flat-plate collectors) due to the Earth’s rotation.
Besides the cost of implementing such a system, SBSP also introduces several new hurdles, primarily the problem of transmitting energy from orbit to Earth’s surface for use. Since wires extending from Earth’s surface to an orbiting satellite are neither practical nor feasible with current technology, SBSP designs generally include the use of some manner of wireless power transmission. The collecting satellite would convert solar energy into electrical energy on board, powering a microwave transmitter or laser emitter, and focus its beam toward a collector (rectenna) on Earth’s surface. Radiation and micrometeoroid damage could also become concerns for SBSP.
SBSP is considered a form of sustainable or green energy, renewable energy, and is occasionally considered among climate engineering proposals. It is attractive to those seeking large-scale solutions to anthropogenic climate change or fossil fuel depletion (such as peak oil).
SBSP is being actively pursued by the Japan and China. In 2008 Japan passed its Basic Space Law which established Space Solar Power as a national goal and JAXA has a roadmap to commercial SBSP. In 2015 the China Academy for Space Technology (CAST) briefed their roadmap at the International Space Development Conference (ISDC) where they showcased their road map to a 1 GW commercial system in 2050 and unveiled a video and description of their design. A proposal for the United States to lead in Space Solar Power has recently received high level attention after it won the D3 (Diplomacy, Development, Defense) competition sponsored by the Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, and USAID Director. As of May 21, 2015, there was an on Change.org and a second active petition at Whitehouse website.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power
The obstacle to space based solar power is obviously the launch cost. If you are paying thousands of dollars per kilogram for payload delivered into Earth orbit, launching thousands of tons of solar collector equipment is a sure route to a very expensive solar space station.
So how do we bring down the launch cost? There are a number of technologies on the drawing board, but lets stick with known technology, preferably a technology which has already been tested to some extent.
There is one cheap space launch technology which stands out – simple design, high thrust, high impulse, based on well understood engineering principles, capable of economically launching thousands, even millions of tons into any orbit you want, using a single stage launch vehicle. The only problem is the fallout.
Project Orion was a study of a spacecraft intended to be directly propelled by a series of explosions of atomic bombs behind the craft (nuclear pulse propulsion). Early versions of this vehicle were proposed to take off from the ground with significant associated nuclear fallout; later versions were presented for use only in space.
The idea of rocket propulsion by combustion of explosive substance was first proposed by Russian explosives expert Nikolai Kibalchich in 1881, and in 1891 similar ideas were developed independently by German engineer Hermann Ganswindt. General proposals of nuclear propulsion were first made by Stanislaw Ulam in 1946, and preliminary calculations were made by F. Reines and Ulam in a Los Alamos memorandum dated 1947. The actual project, initiated in 1958, was led by Ted Taylor at General Atomics and physicist Freeman Dyson, who at Taylor’s request took a year away from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton to work on the project.
The Orion concept offered high thrust and high specific impulse, or propellant efficiency, at the same time. The unprecedented extreme power requirements for doing so would be met by nuclear explosions, of such power relative to the vehicle’s mass as to be survived only by using external detonations without attempting to contain them in internal structures. As a qualitative comparison, traditional chemical rockets—such as the Saturn V that took the Apollo program to the Moon—produce high thrust with low specific impulse, whereas electric ion engines produce a small amount of thrust very efficiently. Orion would have offered performance greater than the most advanced conventional or nuclear rocket engines then under consideration. Supporters of Project Orion felt that it had potential for cheap interplanetary travel, but it lost political approval over concerns with fallout from its propulsion.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propulsion%29
I doubt greens are going to rush to embrace a renewables solution which involves the release of atmospheric nuclear fallout, even if that fallout could be constrained to safe levels. But if the future viability of the planet was really at stake, and if nuclear power was unacceptable for whatever reason, solar power satellites could realistically and reliably deliver the energy our civilisation needs, with minimal carbon emissions, other than whatever was emitted during the construction of the components.
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It’s two for one! We could shade the earth at the same time, thus preventing the inexorable AGW.
Why bpther? Miskolczi theory has proved AGW impossible. Same follows from an observation of the global temperature chart from NOAA. It shows a steady thirty year temperature rise starting in 1910 and stopping in 1940. The extended Keeling curve showa that there was no corresponding increase of atmospjeric carbon dioxide
Space Elevator
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator
We’ll get right on it as soon as someone invents a material strong enough to take the stress. We need about 3 orders of magnitude of improvement on the strongest known materials.
No, only about 1 order of magnitude. Fullerene cable could do it, if we could just figure out how to make it long enough.
That’s gonna take one heck of a big magnetron.
Or many in parallel
The transmitting antenna is a phased array. Same sort of technology that they use in the AEGIS naval radar systems.
I didn’t get it at first, but now I understand the clever way this article mocks the ideas of solar power proponents by proposing an obviously inane idea like “solar panels in space”, while maintaining a serious tone throughout.
Who me? 😉
We already have a foolproof reliable and cheap method of producing energy, which is about to go commercial within 5 years – it’s called a molten salt reactor. Stop wasting time and money on nonsensical crap like this.
True, but…. NRC approval is a very slow process. All of the other government departments want to see solar and wind. I would expect the process of approval to be even slower.
Ric Haldane June 1, 2016 at 7:28 am wrote: “True, but…. NRC approval is a very slow process. All of the other government departments want to see solar and wind. I would expect the process of approval to be even slower.”
Maybe in about nine months or so, that approval process will speed up.
MSR time X 10 equals fusion reactor time?
Further to the thirty year warming of early twentieth century above. It lasted from 1910 to 1940 and then was followed by an abrupt temperature drop that introduced World War II. This is proof that the warming cannot possibly be greenhouse warming. The only way you can stop and reverse greenhouse warming is to remove every absorbing carbon dioxide molecule from the air and this clearly did not happen. With that, we have eliminated greenhouse warming from one third of the century. It follows that if there was no greenhouse warming in the early century there surely was none earlies, in the nineteenth century. And that kills any chance that greenhouse warmingstarted with the industrial age. There is actually no way to prove that any greenhouse warming took p[lace during the rest of the twentieth century either. And I would add to it the twenty-first century as probably also free of the greenhouse effect. All this follows from the observed behavior of global temperature as well as from MGT, the greenhouse theory of Dr. Ferenc M. Miskolczi.
One way to reduce the cost would be to make the panels out of a bunch of those old AOL disk.
Good post Eric.
However the energy solution is simple, move closer to the sun.
Green energy, and technological leadership — what’s not to like? Somebody needs to pitch this to the provincial government of Ontario. They will make it happen.
If you wrap both the Earth and Moon with coils of wire, their respective movements in relation to each other would generate a current in the wire, would it not? 😉 You’d be able to extract even more energy if you super-cooled the system.
Feasibility of Orbital Solar Power
Perhaps, if we could put the solar PV panels in orbit around the Earth where the sun shines 24/7 and there is no loss of energy in the atmosphere creating Solar Power Satellites. The same amount of power could be generated with an array only 504.14 km by 504.14 km (254,160 km^2) or 313.26 by 313.26 miles (98,131.7 miles^2) and at a cost of three times that on the surface, it would probably cost about $48.2 Trillion to install. NASA studied this concept back in the “70s” when oil was still cheap and solar PV panels were a lot more expensive than they are today. Orbital PV power was assumed to not be feasible as it was assumed that we would be using nuclear (fusion) power by now. The point to this is that a lot of the conceptual groundwork has already been done by NASA. It is arguable that all that needs to be done is to dust it off and update it. Although there would be some land use required on the surface of the planet for receiving the power it would only be a very small fraction of that required with the panels on the surface. In the “70s” the choice was microwaves, now lasers are feasible. Thus there is a lower cost and lesser land use — and more importantly this could be scalable. We use a conversion efficiency of 35% in this part of the study but with advanced technologies that could be increased even more e.g. you could use mirrors to focus the energy and then run steam boilers and turbines. The entire system would be more efficient in a vacuum as the gap between the armature and the stator could be closed and that would make the generators a lot more efficient.
The orbital PV panels will also lose capacity at a rate of about 5% per year and be replaced at about 20 years of life or when they reach 75% of their original capacity. Using that number and the goal of having an objective of replacing all carbon based fuels with solar PV panels in 50 years we need to get to a sustained production rate of about 10,588.0 km^2 of solar PV panels per year and then stay at that rate. This would cost about $2.006 Trillion per year and will maintain above 1,065,248.4 TWh of power the minimum required for 9.5 billion people.
Uh, does that mean I have to give up my electric toothbrush?
That is after the probably cost about $48.2 Trillion to install. The entire point of my comment is to show that this idea is unworkable and it has been floated decades ago.
Anyone who has flown over Canadian Shield country has passed over endless miles of scrub evergreens and lakes.
Other than transmission losses and some land-claim issues, it would seem feasible to build clusters of fission reactors with land and cooling water in good supply. Roads and sometimes rails are in place where mines have been developed.
Surely transmission losses from Cochrane, Ontario are less than from orbit.
CANDU?
Manufacture it on the moon and use rail guns for launching the components.
meanwhile, in an alternative anti-universe, scientist proves that a solar panel generates more energy falling down the gravity well back to earth than it ever does from sunlight.
what have they got on you anthony?
This is rubbish and you know it
One problem of the space elevator as presently proposed is that it is designed with a tail extending above Geostationary Orbit, as that the whole of the ‘rope’ is in tension, with the greatest tension at GO level. Think carefully. At GO level the upward and downward forces balance. As altitude decreases, the upward force decreases and the downward force increases. The whole of the rope is still in tension, but far less than if there is a massive “anti-mass” or counterweight hanging above GO level. At earth level the downward force has decreased to zero, as there is no more rope hanging below the earth level. So the rope should have the smallest cross section at earth level and at GO level, thickening in (or abouts) the middle where it has to support the weight of all the rope below it. This means far less material, and the strength of the rope does not need to be so high.
Now carbon is suggested as the ideal material – in the form of nanotubes – as there are fewest protons and neutrons in the molecules, with the strength depending – apparently – on the outer layers of electrons. Not sure how the strength of carbon nanotubes would stand up at about 4 K, suspect it would be about zero. An alternative material at those temperatures is solid metallic hydrogen. Surely there may be a hydrogen isotope which would, at temperatures of 4 to 10 K have sufficient tensile strength to form a rope and not evaporate away?
We all know the real “problem” is too many people wanting to live too materially well AND not have any negative impact on the non-human world. No solution will be good enough. If the world went 100% solar and wind, the screaming would be about bird chopping and frying. And still, loss of natural habitat and too much material consumption (by the Others).
We are in a clash of ideologies: Rousseauian social idealism vs capitalist, material pragmatism. Idealism has no point of victory in the real world, and certainly not in this one. Whatever we do, the McKibbens and Kleins will complain. And adjust their targets and tactics.
We need our governors to stand up and say, there are tradeoffs to the good life, and these are them. Move on.
The problem is “How do you protect a 1GW maser beam from accidental intrusion by something (or someone!) that can absorb the beam and become instantly converted to a white-hot plasma?”
This power system would have the same output as 30,000 AN/SEQ-3 30-kW Laser Weapon System units (the US Navy’s anti-aircraft laser) – CONTINUALLY.
Sigh. Do you people even read the articles? While the beam total power is in the gigaWatts, the beam density is very low, less than background levels, actually. A bird flying through the beam might get a little warm (although most plans call for locating the receiving arrays outside of migratory bird pays anyways).
Frustrating, isn’t it, Paul. As Paul says, every objection to this concept has been addressed in the past, including all the objections posted here in this thread. Everything old is new again.
Eric wrote:
“The obstacle to space based solar power is obviously the launch cost.”
My college thermodynamics professor participated in the early 70s NASA study on space-base solar. As I recall, cost was merely one of several obstacles. For instance, back in 1978 a study was made to determine places where the ground-based reciver should not be placed:
http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/library/1978DOESPS-MappingOfExclusionAreasForRectennaSites.pdf
To quote: “as set forth in the reference design, these receiving
antennas will require sites of approximately 50,000 acres each, with
60 such sites being required across the United States.”
About 83% of the US was so identified as excluded back then. Reasons for exclusion included:
National Recreation Areas …………..
Indian Reservations ……………..
Military Reservations …………….
Other Federal Lands ……
Indian Reservations ……………..
Military Reservations …………….
Other Federal Lands ……………..
National Forests ………………..
Population Density Greater Than 50 Persons per Square Mile (1970 data)………………
Wetlands ……………………
Topography Unacceptable ……………..
Navigable Waterways ……………….
Interstate Highways ……………….
Endangered Species Habitats ……………
“Prime Agricultural Lands” ……………
Flyways of Migratory Waterfowl ………….
Seismic Hazards …………………
North of 40 Degree Latitude ……………….
Winds Greater Than 50 Knots ……………
Number of Days With hail …………….
Number of Days With Thunderstorms …………
Sheet Rainfall………..
Because of limited data and computing power at the time, several additional factors were not considered, including:
Local or State Owned Land (State and Local Parks)
Poor SoiIs
High Groundwater Table
Highways Other Than Interstate Highways
Airports and Air Approach Corridors
Major Air Corridors
RaiIroads
Dust Storm Areas
Wildlife Habitats (Other Than Designated Endangered Species)
Very Poor Air Quality
Near Major/Numerous RF Sources
so the area excluded would almost certainly increase..
And by the way, if mirror misalignment could seriously damage Ivanpah, just imagine what could be done if the microwave energy of a 5 GW space-solar plant is maliciously or accidentally “misaligned”. Probably not an instant “death ray” given its dispersion, but certainly not an acceptable risk for my family.
The answer to that is simple: none. In fact, in normal operation the transmitting antenna would look onto a signal from the receiving station. If for any reason it loses the signal, the beam (transmitted from a phased array similar to a phased-array radar) would be set to disperse at a wide angle (you don’t just turn off that much power quickly). The key is beam density, which, even in normal operation,,is very low, especially by the time that it reaches Earth.
Really bad idea –
Even assuming that the system becomes cost effective ( a big if)
You are taking an energy source (heat) that would otherwise not enter the earth’s atmosphere and using it to heat the planet (in the form of energy) , in effect creating more heat.
With existing solar power, you are only converting heat that is already inside the earth’s atmosphere and converting it into usable energy. (albeit inefficiently)
But you’re eliminating other heat sources, so it evens out.
For a fun read about orion used in Sci-Fi read Footfall by Larry Niven.
Didn’t he write Ringworld?
“Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulûk, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.”
Roughly translated:
“One Ring to rule them all, One ring to find them; One ring to bring them all
and in the darkness bind them.”
Maybe they were a Nostradamus-type of thing? The “One Ring” was a tree ring?
Gunga, your discussions seems to be following a spiral …
This kind of technology is not needed. We do not need to worry about our “carbon footprint”; that is an imaginary threat. There is nothing wrong with putting CO2 in the atmosphere, the amount we are adding is insignificant, because CO2 has a limited effect as a greenhouse gas, and is enormously out-weighed in its affect by water vapour. Nor is there any evidence it drives or changes earth’s climate, other than in the first couple hundred ppm, which keeps earth from being colder than it is. What are the natural drivers of climate changes? We know very little about it. There are many variables, many of which we aren’t even aware of yet, let alone understand their interactions in a very complex system. In a couple hundred years we may understand half of it.
Spot on. Entirely spot on !
Regards,
WL
“Not needed!” There’s the understatement of the year. Much better than laughing my face off for a week!
“Carbon footprint” is not a particular reason for an SPS and never has been.
These proposals call for transmitting power back to the Earth’s surface via a laser or focused microwave beam. Now think about what will happen to any bird or aircraft that wanders into the beam.
Nothing. You need to look at the beam density, not the total power.
Why not use the Orion fuel directly in nuclear power plants instead of indirectly, to lift power-producing apparatus into orbit?
Renewables are as dead as the Roman Empire. Vestiges of the Roman Empire are on display in many museums world-wide and a few standing structures survive throughout Europe. They are very nice.
I’m stocking up on F (Ford Motor Corp.), KOL (coal ETF) and URA (uranium ETF). The real end of the Renewable Empire (and AGW) will happen the moment Barak Hussein Obama retires from Office at Noon on 20 January 2017.
Ha ha
Sorry Elon Musk THBBFT