Solar panels in space could cut Europe's renewable energy needs by 80%
Solar panels in space could cut Europe's renewable energy needs by 80%
cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/36081990
The solar panel is easy, it's the cable run that's a real bitch
Yeah, sending it wirelessly would have massive loss, probably around 90%+
Are they really losses when the leaking, unfocused energy turns all buildings in a kilometer radius into microwave ovens? Just fill them up with popcorn packets and invite everyone over for movie night. We could watch one of the James Bond movies where the villain has an orbital deathray. I think there's at least a couple of them.
It's less about the loss and more about the space required for the receiver and the environmental hazard
That, and wiping off the caked dust.
LoL
lol, what an insane idea...
A physical cable back to Earth is impossible, otherwise we'd already have space elevators.
Any other wireless transmission would have all the same weather problems and energy losses, it would be WAY cheaper to just build more solar panels on the ground.
Someone wants public subsidy money.
Look at the ROI, and if the full lifecycle cost is greater than earth-based solutions, fuck 'em.
That sounds like the least economical way possible to build out solar.
The article is actually discussing a feasibility study for the far future (25 years from now as per the article):
For the first time, researchers from King’s College London have assessed the possible impact that generating solar energy in space could have for Europe. They found it could cut energy battery storage needs by more than two-thirds.
The study, published in Joule, analysed the potential of a design by NASA for solar generation, which is planned to be in use by 2050. The findings show the design could also save money by reducing the cost of the whole power system in Europe by up to 15%, including energy generation, storage and network infrastructure costs – an estimated saving of 35.9 billion euros per year.
Space-based solar power generation involves in-space continuous collection of solar energy. This involves placing large solar panels on satellites in orbit, where they are exposed to much more sunlight and can continuously collect energy without being affected by clouds or the day-night cycle. This energy would then be transmitted to one or more stations on Earth. It is then converted to electricity and delivered to the energy grid or batteries for storage.
It's a cool idea and I'd imagine we'd need an array spanning the globe rather than just over one continent
(25 years from now as per the article)
Anything 20 years or more away is a pipe dream that isn't likely to happen anywhere close to speculation.
You could build a circle of satellites on the dawn dusk line, just have them do polar orbits. I think there's such a thing as a solar stationary orbit.
The thing is, 25 years isn't really that far in the future. Not when you count all the lead in time. Firstly you have to invent the microwave power transmission array, that's probably going to take it a decade, and that's been optimistic, then you've somehow got to arrange to launch hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of solar power satellites, then you have to figure out a way for the satellites to transmit the energy to the transmission array, and you have to build the receiving array on earth.
It took them 10 months just to build our companies new building, and it's the most generic thing you've ever seen. How are they going to do all this in 25 years?
So could a fucking Dyson sphere. This article is PopMech-tier speculative trash. A flying car in every driveway, any day now since the 1960s…
Countries will do everything except build nuclear power plants ig.
Don't feed the troll
Or make more use of renewables. Nuclear has never been cost-efficient, it's just that the costs have been buried in state subsidies to the industry and its supply chain.
Nuclear has never been cost-efficient, it's just that the costs have been buried in state subsidies to the industry and its supply chain.
A lie repeated again and again.
French Cour des Comptes has released a report, back in 2012, the costs of the french nuclear fleet, everything included: 121 billions of euros between 1960 and 2010.
2,4 billions a year. To provide decarbonized and reliable electricity for decades.
To put in perspective, Germany is more than a trillion of euros in for their Energiewende, or about 40 billions of euros a year for ~25 years, and they still have one of the costliest and dirtiest electricity or Europe, while still not being close to stop coal and having no plan to get out of gas.
And for more perspective, EDF had 118 billions of dollars of revenues in 2024, mostly coming from nuclear, and 11 billions of net results, including the payback of the interests of the debt that the french government imposed on EDF.
Anyone claiming nuclear has never been or can’t be profitable or cost-efficient is either uneducated or a liar.
When done right, nuclear is profitable as fuck, that's empirically proved.
This is an idea from the 1960s back when they thought solar panels would be like computer chips and remain super expensive in terms of area but become exponentially better at the amount of sunlight they could convert into electricity.
It makes absolutely zero sense to spend billions of dollars putting solar panels in space and beaming the power back to earth now that they are so cheap per unit area. The one thing you could argue a space based solar array could do would be to stretch out the day length so you need less storage, but that's easier to accomplish using long electrical cables.
Is this the microwave power from space idea again? /wcgw…
This energy would then be transmitted to one or more stations on Earth. It is then converted to electricity and delivered to the energy grid or batteries for storage.
How is the energy transmitted to Earth?
And keep in mind that, if they don't do it, the sun transmits energy to the earth for free.
Yeah this article is severely lacking in any concrete details.
I'd also like to know how exactly it is that they plan to deploy massive arrays of solar panels to space. Most earth-based solar farms are huge and take up entire fields, some are a few kilometres across in size. That's many orders of magnitude more massive than anything we've previously ever launched.
Plus whatever power transmission system they come up with would have to be powerful to be of any use but if it's that powerful would present an active danger and would effectively constitute a space-based weapon system.
It's a cool sci-fi idea but it is all pie in the sky.
I think climate change mitigation can be the next scam after AI. Once AI bubble bursts they will start looking for new investments and I think climate change is ready to start generating profits. People are desperate enough to start investing money in things that will limit effect of climate change. Who will profit? Corporation that will work on those projects. Anything space related (solar panels in space, geoengineering) will require Space X/Blue Origin. Google, Microsoft and Amazon are already invested in nuclear fusion and modular reactors. Tesla is an energy provider. Any CO2 sequestration projects will require new startups, obviously backed by the same corporations. My guess is very soon we will see governments paying those companies to solve the problem they created. Even more money will be pumped to the 1%. It went form "climate change isn't real", to "climate change isn't caused by humans", to "it is caused by humans but nothing can be done about it". Next step will be "we can fix it if you pay us".
The scammers are already all over it like flies on shit.
This energy would then be transmitted to one or more stations on Earth.
And how do you suppose to do that?
Beam the power from space like they do in Mirai Shounen Conan? Or space shuttles with batteries? Or a giant cable that somehow doesn't break?
It's not possible.
Naw, you just beam it back to earth as a laser. That way you could highjack the signal and fill a house with popcorn kernals a to start a huge neighborhood block party.
Deathray!
That’s a real genius plan.
Feasible? Only time will tell. Possible? Caltech did it two years ago. Look up MAPLE. Wireless energy transfer to/from space was achieved.
At what scale? Milliwatts? Watts? On cloudy days?
This seems very much to fall into the "technically" possible, but impossible to scale realm.
RD1 generates power 99% of the year and collects solar radiation by autonomously redirecting its reflectors toward a concentrator to focus sunlight throughout each day. RD2 uses flat panels, with solar cells facing away from Earth and microwave emitters facing toward the Earth. RD2 generates power 60% of the year due to its limited capability to reposition itself or redirect solar radiation toward its solar cells.
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20230017756/downloads/ASCEND%20SBSP%20Final%2005162024.pdf
Microwaves or even Masers. This is nothing new, lot's of studies and experiments. It's not infeasible, efficiency not that bad either. But solarpanles on earth have only advantages, especially integrated in roofs or walls.
It would probably be done with lasers. Its not perfect tech rn but it is possible. If not the most efficient for its price
solar panels on earth could reduce it 100%
Might as well just start building the dyson sphere instead
This article feels like AI, generated from one sentence.
All fun and games until a piece of space junk knocks into the satellite and you accidentally cut through the Dutch sea wall.
I think this was one of the possible disasters that could happen in Sim City 2000
Bzzzt
There would absolutely have to be safety measures on this to avoid that exact scenario from occurring. I cannot remember the author of the book right offhand, but there's a book called PowerSat that goes through something very similar to this. As long as the beam is diffuse and not incredibly focused, it should be fine if something flies through it like a bird or if the beam gets knocked off course, it wouldn't damage infrastructure. There would also need to be good auto cut off functionality built into the thing so that if it realized it was off target, maybe by like a focusing laser or something, it would automatically shut itself down.
Or until sabotage happens, like with the baltic cables and pipes
Fusion would be much more practical than beaming back power from space. I think the chance of seeing either of those by 2050 is about 0%.
Fusion does not exist and wouldn't be in time if we started buildong commercial plants today. Low lead time is the only shot we have.
Space based solar has already been demonstrated, but will not provide substantial power since the receiver is basically a giant solar array and dead zone where life gets toasted.
Here’s the paper from NASA that this is based on.
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20230017756/downloads/ASCEND%20SBSP%20Final%2005162024.pdf
Or just provide more subsidies for solar panels at residential home roofs
NIMBYies in panic mode.
that's some easier said than done statement there
Solar energy gathered in space is less likely to be affected by cloud cover and is safe from natural disasters such as flooding and earthquakes
You don't say. However I suspect that the chance of being hit by a micrometeorite is significantly higher.
Wouldn't that bring more solar energy to earth and contribute to energy imbalance?
Trivial amounts compared to the solar energy hitting the entire surface of half the Earth.
The problem isn’t incoming energy, it’s outgoing energy. Greenhouse gases reduce the amount of energy radiated back into space and that’s what increases the mean global temperature.
Adding a few hundred square miles of surface area wouldn’t change much.
That's not what they are talking about.
They're talking about instability in the electrical grid. If we could just snap our fingers and have instant fusion power tomorrow we still couldn't actually use it because the demand of electricity wouldn't keep up with the supply.
Yes you can store power in batteries and via other methods but only to a certain point, you can consider that storage to just be demand, but beyond that you start to have issues with grid stability. You have to start inventing ways of wasting that power just to get rid of it. As more energy intensive technologies come online you make less and less use of that mitigating technology. Of course the better thing to do would be simply to keep supply roughly in line with demand, which means we don't invent massive energy generating systems if we don't yet need them.
How's that coming along?
https://eepower.com/news/pge-start-up-solaren-corp-plan-to-beam-solar-power-from-space/
Oh.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaren
" Solaren has since announced that the contract with PG&E has been forgone"
This is just Space Nuttery. Never, ever, EVER, going to work. Strictly sci-fi.
Some sci-fi comes true. Sadly usually only the dystopian ones.
Because they don't need warp drive and tritanium...