Essay by Eric Worrall
“… we think we can build and commission a 2GW power station every year. …”
Space-based solar power: How it works, and why it’s being considered now
ABC Science / By technology reporter James Purtill
It’s an idea that sprang from mid-century science fiction and was being seriously considered in the 1970s, in the golden years of space flight.
Key points:
- Space-based solar power involves beaming clean energy to Earth from orbital solar farms
- If it works, it could supply non-intermittent renewable electricity
- But the technology is unproven and may end up costing more than projected
Space-based solar power (SBSP) was eventually dismissed as too expensive, and consigned to the attic of Space Age fantasies, along with lunar bases and ray guns.
Now, it’s back. Space agencies are returning to the idea of constructing enormous orbital arrays of solar panels, then beaming the power to Earth via microwaves.
Putting solar panels in space may seem unnecessary (when there’s still room on our roofs), but this vision of the future has powerful backers.
Millions of dollars are being ploughed into the concept of vast photovoltaic “islands in the sky”.
…
Martin Soltau is an analyst at Frazer-Nash Consultancy and co-chair of the UK’s Space Energy Initiative, which is a consortium of companies, universities and government helping to develop SBSP.
A solar power station at the “gigawatt scale” is achievable within 12 years, he says.
“After that … we think we can build and commission a 2GW power station every year.“
…
A cost-benefit analysis commissioned by the ESA calculated the average cost of electricity generation by SPSP over the lifetime of a generator unit, including construction, maintenance and decommissioning.
It arrived at a figure of 0.038-0.106 euros per kilowatt-hour by 2045 ($0.059-$0.16 per kWh).
By comparison, Dr White says, ground-based solar has a cost of around 0.03 euros per kWh — and falling.
The figure doesn’t take into account the need for storage, but “the cost of storage is also coming down rapidly.”
…
Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2022-12-20/space-based-solar-power-europe-funding-research/101733558
Dr. White’s squirming over the cost of terrestrial solar + energy storage is amusing.
The fact space based solar is apparently being seriously considered, and the emphasis on the fact space based solar is not weather dependent, in my opinion is a rare glimpse of the dire state of the terrestrial green energy push.
Even some of our more numerically challenged green politicians are starting to realise that renewables are more hype than potential, that the intermittency and unreliability of terrestrial renewable energy is a showstopper.
Of course, space based solar is not without its problems. Space experiences its own “weather”, in the form of solar storms, blasts of radiation which can damage fragile electronics.
Low Earth orbit is suffused with corrosive monatomic oxygen blasted off the top of the Earth’s atmosphere by solar radiation. Chemical erosion may be less of an issue if lots of money is spent to boost the solar power satellites into geostationary orbits, but the radiation can be worse in higher orbits. Geostationary orbit (22,236 miles) is inside the Van Allen radiation belt (400-36,040 miles), a region of space where the Earth’s magnetic field traps energetic, electrically charged radiation which can wreak havoc on sensitive electronics.
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The longest extension cord I own is only 100 feet long. Oh no, sol for me!!
Regards,
Bob
Does this also mean I can’t charge my EV by running an extension cord out the window of my apartment on the 2nd floor? /sarc
SPAM ALERT!!!
Piker.
I need 10 gauge wire to run 40A @ur momisugly 120VAC (4800W) 100 feet.
How big of a wire do they need to run 2GW 250+ miles?
All you would need is a EV drone with a MW receiver and transmitter to intercept the beam and re-beam it to your EV MW receiver and charge up. Or just go to the giant and charge up for free with out all of the fuss.
If you had an extension cord that long, you would not need the satellite. It would generate power from the magnetic fields as it whipped through them.
Ain’t that the truth!
Well, space based solar is more practical technology than land based solar and storage, but that is not saying very much.
It’s more practical for satellites and space stations. It is not more practical for sending power to the ground. These satellites are of no use when they are over water, and they will be over water most of the time.
Then they will design a laser relay for power (think Starlink over ocean but for power).
And is prone to micrometetor damage from seasonal meteor showers. JWST has already had a mirror damaged
Do you have any idea first off, how many of these “relay” satellites would be needed and how expensive each of them would be?
First off they have to not just withstand but capture all of the power of a 2GW laser. Then they need to convert 2GW of power into a microwave beam and accurately send it earthward.
Solving the problem of what to do while the power satellites are over the ocean could easily end up being many times more costly than the power satellites themselves.
A bad idea, made even worse.
A common story when trying to get renewable energy to work.
“how expensive each of them would be?”
Making a silly, costly, unworkable idea even more unworkable and uneconomical is trendy.
F.ex. take renewable energy (like wind, or solar) => it’s intermittent => so let’s invest in storage.
Storage = make H2 (electrolysis), sometimes make methane (methanation), make electricity from H2 or methane.
The MYRTE project = Mission hydrogène renouvelable pour l’intégration au réseau électrique:
https://www.contrepoints.org/2015/06/28/212148-myrte-sous-le-soleil-le-contribuable
So the French scientists managed to invent a tool to make electricity at 50 times the usual price… because muh storage of intermittent renewable energy.
Slogan: we know how to store energy.
Reality: there is a test project to store a small amount of energy at an insane price.
They pretty much need to be geostationary.
At that distance, the beam will be so wide by the time it reaches the Earth, that it will be very expensive to collect enough of it to make the effort worthwhile.
At that distance, the beam will be so wide
Just set up a field of solar panels to capture the power in the beam 🙂
(I probably shouldn’t give them ideas)
Which would probably require they use all the energy they use and then some.
I guess they could just put some ROCKET FUEL boosters on them…D’oh!
A solar power satellite in geosynchronous orbit would be over its ground receiver station 24/7/365, and deliver uninterrupted power the whole time (with rare, brief and predictable eclipse events). Every geosynchronous communication satellite is solar powered, and they have a lifetime of 20 to 25 years. These days, the life limit isn’t on the performance of the solar panels, the electronics, or even station keeping propellant. It is more dependent on changes in communication technology on the ground (e.g. the shift from C-band to Ku-band carrier frequencies, and analog to digital channels, etc). Geosynchronous solar power satellites would provide stable, reliable baseload power continuously, and would need no storage infrastructure.
The biggest problem with space solar power as currently conceived is, in fact, the land area required to accomodate microwave receiving rectennas (laser is impractical due to clouds and other atmospherics). The power per unit area of the microwaves has to be within acceptable biological limits, and despite decades of research, these are still controversial. At first blush, limiting the power density to no more than that of solar insolation might seem a reasonable limit. Even at that, however, you’d be talking about a vast land area, and a flyover keepout zone above it. If such contiguous land could be had, we would then be faced with restructuring the entire electric grid to take from that source, and deliver it across an entire continent.
Beaming power from a solar power satellite via microwaves might seem like the most economical way to proceed, especially in light of the history of commercial space economics. For most of the space age, commercial space economics has been dominated by communication markets. The cost of putting a pound of payload into space is in the thousands of dollars per pound – but electromagnetic radiation doesn’t weigh anything. We can send all we want into space, and have it delivered anywhere on Earth with only the initial cost of the relay satellite and ground stations, and their operating costs.
I think the idea of beaming power isn’t a good solution to the “last mile (or 23,500 mile) problem.” I have a very different approach under development, one that is more consistent with our existing energy infrastructure. But I wouldn’t rule out space solar power under any circumstances.
I’d rule out solar, because it’s still low density and you’re still using fossil fuels to produce all the infrastructure for it, from panels to bases to additional T&D lines (not to mention the herd of elephants in the room – storage).
Plus lots of toxic waste.
Just do nuclear. Much better quality power, much less land needed, less waste especially when reprocessing the fuel rods.
They are supposed to be placed in geosynchronous orbits, not low, so they’ll be over their customers. The power beamed down will be steady and constant, not needing to track or switch antennas – it’s not StarLink.
Let’s imagine a 2GW microwave beam from space to a receiving station on earth. What could possibly go wrong? The beam would be the most powerful energy weapon ever other than nuclear bombs. Anything passing through the beam (birds, airplanes, clouds) would be instantly vaporized. Anyone who had control of where the beam was aimed could rule the world a la James Bond super villains.
A 2Gw space laser? What could possibly go wrong?
Just don’t call it a weapon … someone might use it as such.
The 2 gigawatts here can be compared to high power industrial lasers for cutting steel that typically operate in the kilowatt range, one millionth of the above. Geoff S
Indeed – that’s what techno-utopian idiots can’t understand. 2 GW power beam = 2 GW laser. Space = orbital = at least hemispheric targeting range. No nation on earth will stand for even one of these, much less the hundreds and thousands needed to replace terrestrial power generation.
Wasn’t that the plot of one of the (bad) James Bond movies?
IIRC “Diamonds are Forever”
And btw the recent laser fusion experiment used ~2MJ (total) laser to release
~3MJ of fusion energy, however it took ~300MJ to power the laser.
1 Watt = 1 Joule/sec
“ The solar energy collected by the satellites would be converted into microwaves and beamed to “rectifying antennas” or “rectennas” on Earth, which would, in turn, convert them to electricity. ”
This is how the “energy” reaches Earth. It would not be a bright beam from a mirror.
The look changes, but all the rest is kooky.
What happens to anything that happens to cross the path of those microwaves? A plan, a bird, whatever.
Pretty much nothing, the design for them is to have the beam spread out over a large area by the time it reaches the ground.
Mark,
The key concept for an industrial laser to cut steel and many other uses is focus the beam into a tiny cross section. The smaller the beam radius, the better the cut. Without this key concept you do not have much from your pricey laser.
You are talking of a sort of opposite concept, using poor focus to avoid local heating of the earth surface by the beam from space, be it laser or microwave.
Sounds contrary. Geoff S
Each “rectenna” could be cheap, however you are going to need billions of them. Plus the wiring and electronics necessary to concentrate all of that power into usable amounts.
Ho hum, need to find ten times more big copper deposits each year than present rates, to handle all this unusual electricity generation.
I have hands on experience finding a few such new copper deposits hidden below featureless flat wheat fields. It is hard, exacting scientific work You cannot wish a new mine into existence.You cannot ramp up the discovery rate ten-fold overnight. There are few experienced hard scientists any more. Geoff S
And once again, nobody is bothering to consider, even for a moment, the effect on climate, weather, ecosystems, etc. of having all that solar energy intercepted before it enters the atmosphere. And of all those shadows cast by the number needed, assuming you could find the resources for the serial replacements needed.
of having all that solar energy intercepted before it enters the atmosphere
I’m curious what the effect would be of 2GW of energy being beamed to a rather spread out reciever on earth. Pretty sure that would heat the atmosphere in the area, right? I don’t know by how much, but if enough, wouldn’t it cause a permanent low-pressure zone? Which seems to me it would cause a permanent storm around the receiver.
Hey, even more problems to blame on climate change!
It would be simpler to use the microwave beam to evaporate sea water from a refillable reservoir and capture the steam to run turbines. Could also do double duty as a desalination plant.
If you want to capture the steam in order to do useful work, you will have to boil the water in an enclosed container. The container would also need to be transparent to microwaves, which leaves out any form of metal.
“rectifying antennas” or “rectennas”
It sounds to me like they want to insert an antenna into each and every one of us.
I think “rectalennas” is the term they’re searching for.
I read a book by T A Heppenheimer called “Toward Distant Suns “ 1979
Dealt with fusion, breeder reactors , space based solar arrays, mining the moon, building Stanford toruses for living and a bunch of other stuff I can’t remember
Nothing was done
Further exploration of space, habitats on the Moon and Mars, and later the moons of Jupiter or Saturn; these are some of the advances we forfeit to pursue the Green Raw Deal!
The Light Water Breeder Reactor was built and successfully tested in the 1970’s, before Heppenheimer’s book was published.
I should have excluded the breeder from not being done
Most of humanity doesn’t have enough money to buy curtains for their house windows. So taxing them enough to to put sunlight absorbers in space isn’t going to happen…
Windows! Such luxury.
They get taxed to death to pay for bird choppers and to subsidize electric luxury cars, so why not?
I know birds (etc.) don’t matter, but what would happen to a flock that flies through a 2 GW beam?
Instant crispy duck
Mr. Wang says they be frying.
Or a fully-loaded passenger jet!!
Absolutely nothing. That 2GW is spread out over several square miles.
Would this use up more or less land and material resources than the total wind/solar (on earth) delusion?
Does that mean several square miles (several = 3 to 5) of receivers?
That’s about 200W per square metre, it would be cheaper covering the area in Solar PV.
Or you could just use a huge mirror and double the amount of sunlight and therefore the output of the Solar PV
When there is good sunlight on those several square miles.
You could push it to 1000W/m2, ~same as sunlight, but microwaves ate easier to convert back to electricity (80% the last time I looked) and it would be ON 24/7/365, even through clouds.
Peter Kalmus wasn’t fantasying about lizards frying on rocks and birds dropping dead out of the sky, he was observing one of the quantum reality streams where spaced based solar power is accomplished
At 23,000 miles above the ground based collector, the power transmission beam is going to be around 70 metres in diameter. There is also going to be the attendant problem of satellite station keeping to stop the beam wandering and destroying the area surrounding the collector.
Or, we could point them at Chinese Virus Research Labs.
I suppose it could be confiscated for military purposes?
There will not be a rectenna on every rooftop – the beam is, as you rightly point out, quite concentrated. I would be concerned about the ability to point such a concentrated beam incredibly accurately to avoid it “wandering and destroying the area surrounding the collector”
Station keeping is not trivial, and more so if the collector is of a significant size. It would act as a solar sail.
“may end up costing more than projected”
No kidding. Artemis 1 alone cost $4 billion and Artemis 2 is two years off.
Occupy Mars!
Any glitch in where they’re pointing the energy beam potentially turns any ‘space based solar platform’ into a Death Star.
Don’t tell Marjorie Taylor Greene!
https://news.yahoo.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-tries-squirm-005914269.html
(The anti-Semitism angle is just silly BTW. Unless they are telling us that some people are above the reach of free speech.)
Don’t live near the ground station for those 2G Watts beamed down. A little nudge on the satellite and you are cooked like a turkey at Christmas.
Eric,
“Space experiences it’s own “weather,”…
Are you SURE it isn’t climate!? /snarc
It seems that the purveyors of climate porn are trying to push their works of fiction into every other genre. The mind virus is strong in these ones!
Whatever Can Happen, Will happen. Murphy’s Law
A quick trip down causality lane and we find this space-based solar array beaming the power down to the Earth and missing the receiving station and burning down a nearby town.
Murphy was a delusional optimist – Sodd’s Law
Murphy didn’t write Murphy’s Law. It was written by another man with the name of Murphy.
we think we can build and commission a 2GW power station every year.
Is that the output power at the ground station…Suure it is…
the fact space based solar is not weather dependent,
What about heavy winter cloud cover…
There were some very cool artists in the 70’s whipping up nifty renderings of 6 mile diameter orbital space stations, beaming microwave power to the earth, in a weak beam path as to not fry passigners in jets…
Nothing new under the sun…heh
We can build it, even price it. But we have no idea how to make it work 🙂
but….Elon Musk said look at that big ol’ fusion furnace up there in the sky….let’s use it more.
Where does this myth, that the cost of solar power is falling, come from?
Ditto the claim that the price of “storage” is falling.
Batteries are the only viable form of storage, and the cost of them has been rising.
Pumping stations for dams are the only viable form of storage, and the empty places to put them are not multiplying.
Lithium futures are up.
Satellite solar may not be weather dependent, however it is orbit dependent.
Until you can build enough satellites that there will always be a satellite overhead, you will only get power from these satellites for a few minutes, every couple of hours.
The other thing is that around 3/4ths of the Earth is covered by water, which means that regardless of how many satellites you build, each one will be unusable 3/4ths of the time.
Instead of land-based rectifiers, it’d be simpler to use the microwaves directly to evaporate sea water, in a refillable reservoir where the steam can be captured to run turbines. The hot salts left behind could produce more steam as the reservoir refills until the next satellite is in position to repeat the process.
If you boil water in an open reservoir the steam escapes, it would be impossible to capture it in order to use it to do work.
The only way to get steam to do work, is to boil the water in a closed container.
For this contraption to work, the container would have to be transparent to micro waves, which rules out any container made out of metal.
Ahem, geosynchronous orbits for solar power satellites. Just like communication satellites.
More proof that a large proportion of academia and policy wonks live entirely in a world of fantasy. Let’s set them all free in the wilderness where fossil fuels and cell phones are hard to come by and let them solve some real problems or else test Darwins theory of natural selection.
Give them spears, or a bow and arrows, then set them down on Svalbard or along Hudson Bay! I’ll bet they wouldn’t write many stories about the disappearing polar bears.
Maybe they can come up with helpful hints on how Eskimos or Inuits can become more carbon neutral!
The whole of of them would become carbon neutral after a brief period of decomposition. Nature collects all debts.
They are trying so desperately to get this s**t to work, aren’t they? “Anything but fossil fuels and nuclear power! ANYTHING!” How long before they literally believe in faerie dust?
Talk about crazy conspiracy theories, there’s actually an entire industry centered around the theory that Solar PV, Wind Turbines, and Lithium Batteries can be combined to supply a net positive energy balance while at the same time reducing CO2 emissions. It takes a lot of conspirators to come up with a theory as insane and easily refuted as that!
The silliest theory evah is that there exist such thing as renewable energy, or unlimited energy, or God given, and that you have to pay for it.
Oh boy! These guys are just nuts. Experimentation on a global scale. What could possibly go wrong?
You are catching solar energy that normally would by-pass the earth Some might be energy that would normally hit the earth as sunlight anyway and that portion that would normally hit the earth anyway wouldn’t matter. (Unless the satellite fell on you.) But some of that energy would probably be energy that would normally whiz right past the earth. The sun light that would normally harmlessly whiz right past the earth but that you are now converting to microwaves and re-directing to the ground is going to affect the earth’s thermal balance. Wouldn’t it be ironic if these nut cases in their Quixotic quest to prevent a fictitious global warming from carbon dioxide were to cause a real global warming by adding extra energy to the earth? I suppose you could get away with a few such collectors without doing too much heating but what if you put up a few thousand of these collectors? Say five thousand of them each the size of a football field? Yikes!
Second, microwaves are absorbed by water. That’s why you don’t put your cat in the microwave oven. A portion of that microwave beam that you beam to the ground is going to be absorbed by atmospheric moisture. I have no idea what percent of the beam will be absorbed by the atmosphere before it reaches the ground. But isn’t that going to create an atmospheric hot spot? Wouldn’t a column of hot air in the atmosphere throw off the winds and disrupt normal weather patterns? Wouldn’t it melt ice crystals in clouds and cause rain?
Anyway the whole thing is a dumb idea creating expensive electricity and with possible unforeseen consequences. But then the people who believe in global warming are dumb people. Never underestimate the power of a big mouth dumb person with a cause and a megaphone. Wouldn’t it make more sense just to build nuclear fission plants or just to forget the whole thing and go back to burning our five hundred year reserves of coal?
Clearly, that’s their plan. That’s what they started with – create an atmospheric “hot spot” which can then be blamed on…CO2!
Since, you know, CO2 is never going to create one…
Space agencies are returning to the idea of constructing enormous orbital arrays of solar panels, then beaming the power to Earth via microwaves.
*********************
These big-league daydreamers still won’t address the toxic waste issue that solar panels leave behind, regardless of whether it is on Earth or in space….
The solar panel toxic waste problem – CFACT
“Solar panels generate 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than nuclear power plants. They also contain lead, cadmium, and other toxic (even carcinogenic) chemicals that cannot be removed without breaking apart the entire panel.”
*********
If the above CFACT quote is even partly true, it is big-time B.S. to call solar energy green.
The dirty little secrets of the “clean energy” movement that they somehow manage to keep secret from the masses.
Any analysis on the additional energy input to the world ? Seems to create more issues than what it intend to address.
I can see beamed energy from space competing head-to-head with energy from fusion reactors. 😆
In only twenty more years!
I thought it was 30! You must be an optimist!
You are going to able to stand underneath the microwave beams and collect freshly cooked birds.
And if they beam the power down at wind farm sites, they’ll deliver those cooked birds pre-cut!
Tinfoil hats will be absolutely necessary.