Power plant in space by 2035

[Brooksie359]

2 hours ago, seon123 said:

Even assuming ideal conditions, and that somehow transmitting power wirelessly to the ground is as efficient as a cable hundreds of times shorter, I cannot imagine sending solar power plants to space would be cheaper than building a power plant that's 13 times as large on the ground.

Well I would assume that the issue would be space to put those solar panels. I mean you could likely get away with using large patches of land for solar panels to effectively replace non renewable sources of energy in places that get alot of sunshine and have room for the solar farms. That likely isn't the case in the UK as I would imagine land and weather are going to be a problem. If this works it could save alot of land and if it can effectively output power at a more constant rate than traditional solar then it can also reduce the need for battery storage. 

[pythonmegapixel]

6 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

From what I understand the UK has horrible weather for solar panels as it is often cloudy so I would imagine if you take that into account then you can get something closer to that number. I mean the UK Is probably one of the worst places to use solar panels based on it typical weather patterns. 

It's not ideal. But it's still possible for a domestic rooftop solar panel installation to pay for itself over its lifetime, especially if you time usage carefully (i.e. if possible doing things that use a lot of electricity when it's sunny outside)

[jagdtigger]

On 5/14/2022 at 5:56 AM, Roswell said:

You can absolutely beam energy in a number of different forms over long stretches of space.

With a craptastic efficiency, probably they are going to loose the gains of putting the panels into space....

[jagdtigger]

3 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

it could save alot of land

Filling up rooftops and covering parking lots (basically it would be like a roof above cars) with them could also save a lot of land and would be orders of magnitudes cheaper to  build and maintain.....

[mr moose]

On 5/14/2022 at 12:50 PM, jos said:

 

My concerns is poor birds that will pass by?

They don't care about birds with wind turbines, I can't see them starting to care now.

 

On 5/14/2022 at 12:50 PM, jos said:

Will there be any unforeseen environmental impact in the name of zero emission.

 

There already is,  every day they avoid nuclear in favor of solar and wind with as yet unproven battery technology another nail is driven in our ecological coffin. 

 

[pythonmegapixel]

13 minutes ago, mr moose said:

They don't care about birds with wind turbines, I can't see them starting to care now.

Bird strikes undoubtedly happen with wind turbines - but assuming the suitable locations are chosen it's not the absolute travesty some would like to paint it as. To put it into perspective, in the UK, orders of magnitude more birds are killed each year by people's domestic cats than by wind turbines. (Yes, there are obviously orders of magnitude more domestic cats than wind turbines, but how much low-CO₂ electricity do they produce for us?)

 

And don't forget fossil-fuel fired power stations are far from blameless when it comes to harming wildlife also.

[mr moose]

4 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

Bird strikes undoubtedly happen with wind turbines - but assuming the suitable locations are chosen it's not the absolute travesty some would like to paint it as. To put it into perspective, in the UK, orders of magnitude more birds are killed each year by people's domestic cats than by wind turbines. (Yes, there are obviously orders of magnitude more domestic cats than wind turbines, but how much low-CO₂ electricity do they produce for us?)

 

And don't forget fossil-fuel fired power stations are far from blameless when it comes to harming wildlife also.

And to think we could still improve those numbers by building a nuclear plant instead of a wind farm. 

[pythonmegapixel]

33 minutes ago, mr moose said:

And to think we could still improve those numbers by building a nuclear plant instead of a wind farm. 

Well, we could, but that comes with its own set of problems. In particular it's not great for the energy security of individual nations as uranium mines only exist in a few places. It also can't be scaled rapidly to cope with peaks in demand, so you would need either storage (and if you're going to need that, why not just use renewables anyway) or other sources to supplement it.

[Needfuldoer]

Because beaming more solar energy into the Earth's atmosphere sounds like just the thing we should be doing right now.

 

/s

[CarlBar]

I feel a need to find the nearest  brick wall and bang my head till my collection of headaches goes away.

 

First things first. Microwave are very popular when designing radars for all weather operation. Ground Attack radars, ATGM guidance radars, e.t.c. And where the primary frequency of use in late war allied radar system both sea, land, and air. Yes parts of the Microwave spectrum are absorbed really well by living matter, (and by extension parts of the atmosphere), thats not true of the entire frequency range though, Microwave covers a big range, (just as visible light does).

 

Likewise that point about visible light plays into the solar panel efficiency claims, even on a perfect day at a location near the earths equator a decent percentage of the suns energy is absorbed or reflected by the earths atmosphere before it ever reaches a ground based solar panel. And don't forget the solar intensity reaching the surface varies with time of year. And as others have mentioned weather and time of day are a factor too. 

 

And no, this isn't going to be a ravening death ray. It doesn't need to be anywhere near that powerfully concentrated. If you wanted to match the entire US electrical Grid output, (1.2 terrawats, which is far more than the US uses on average), and you converted Lake Michigan, (this is an example of an area thats relativity small compared to the land area of the US or the ocean area off it's coasts, but is big enough to make a good example) into a massive recover you'd only need, (assuming a 50% inefficiency), a total of 40 watts of microwave energy per square meter. That is higher than the US legal standard for continuous exposure, though i'm not sure by how much, (not sure the modern standard), but it on;t cook you or any animal that wanders into it. The average solar energy that reaches the earths surface, (averaged across the whole globe, so it's a higher in hotter climates), is 340 watts per square meter for a reference point. And it takes 4200 joules to increase kg of water by 1 degree.

 

Also you can protect yourself with aluminium foil . Thats semi-serious btw, not sure actual kitchen foil has enough aluminium in it, but any metal blocks microwaves pretty efficiently so creating adequate protection for anyone who has to work in the area would be trivial. Microwaves are not x-rays, they don;t go through everything in sight and don't produce nasty contaminated materials from long exposure like particle radiation.

 

As far as total system efficiency. As i said, experiments have been run, in fact chapter 3 of the link i gave has details on such. The receivers converted the electricity at 82.5% efficiency, and whilst the total system efficiency was only about 54%, most of that loss was in the transmitter, (they where using one of the goldstone tracking array dishes for it, not a purpose designed transmitter which even then could reach upto 90% efficiency). But even at 54% efficiency that makes a nuclear or geothermal plant of the same capacity around half again as bad at dumping energy into the environment, they only convert around 30-35% of the thermal energy into electricity, the rest is waste. Same is true of fossil fuel plants and you'll notice climate scientist are worried about the CO2, not the waste heat, (though the water vapour they release to dissipate that heat is a bit more of an issue).

 

Lastly, once again i really recommend reading that link, virtually everything raised here is covered in it somwhere. It isn't some random stuff. It's a laymen breakdown of the Stanford University research project on the matter from the late 60's. Those bicycle wheel space colonies that rotate fro gravity that are commonly called a "Stanford Torus", yeah the research paper behind those, (and O'Neil Cylinders, and another egg shaped design they called sunflower).

 

It's not perfect, there are definitely area's where we've learned more since, but it's absolutely well worth the read if you've any interest in Space Colonies, Solar Power Satellites, or Moon Mining.

[thechinchinsong]

3 hours ago, mr moose said:

And to think we could still improve those numbers by building a nuclear plant instead of a wind farm. 

Nuclear in most places is gonna take 10 or 20 years to build cause of regulations and pushback depending on where you live. Solar and Wind for all their faults are much quicker to get online. At this point it's still relatively cheap, relatively "eco friendly", and relatively quick to build so I can see why governments choose these instead of nuclear. If you have the ability to plan long term like China though, you can afford to build lots of nuclear as they have been and continue to do. Too bad in other places we got NIMBYs and nuclear scaremongers and a lack of financial incentive to do it so it never gets done.

[jagdtigger]

1 hour ago, thechinchinsong said:

Solar and Wind for all their faults are much quicker to get online. At this point it's still relatively cheap, relatively "eco friendly", and relatively quick to build so I can see why governments choose these instead of nuclear.

And factually unpredictable and unreliable, where as with nuclear its always available without a fail.

[Donut417]

On 5/13/2022 at 11:05 PM, LWM723 said:

You can't "beam electricity". Maybe a long extension cord.

 "They produce direct current electricity, that's then converted into microwaves via solid state radio frequency power amplifiers and transmitted in a coherent microwave beam down to Earth."

 

From the article. To me it sound like an interesting concept. The only issue is what happens if something bad happens to the satellite? Will we be without power? Also something like this sounds expensive. I wonder what the cost of this is vs just building things like Nuclear power plants? 

[Vishera]

On 5/14/2022 at 6:57 AM, LWM723 said:

You can "transmit" radio waves but not high voltage electrical waves in a way as to power an electric grid. Two different things altogether.

The thing is that energy can be converted to different types of energy - and electricity is a form of energy.

For example:

Light and heat from the sun>reaches the Space Solar Power Plant>light and heat converted to invisible infrared or UV light>projected to earth>reaches a solar power plant on earth>converted to electricity.

[CarlBar]

2 hours ago, Sakuriru said:

Microwaves are notably easily absorbed by water, which makes it ideal for heating up food.

 

Again not universally true of all frequencies of microwave energy. Microwave covers a pretty wide range of frequencies. Some go through clouds and the like just fine. Hence it's use in air traffic control radars, ship navigation, GPS signals, and a umber of wireless communication protocols, (including some mobile phone systems, but mroe commonly sat phones and ground to ground radio links).

[Sauron]

I somewhat doubt this can meaningfully scale up. The cost and emissions of placing these things in orbit will likely take years of operation to offset. If at any point a panel breaks there's no easy way to fix or replace it. The efficiency of converting the energy to microwaves and sending it tens of thousands of km down must be pretty low. Also the receiving antenna, while smaller than solar power plants of supposedly similar output, still takes quite a bit of space and I imagine maintenance.

 

Then again these solar panels would be much more efficient due to having essentially no downtime and no atmospheric filter between them and the sun. If it actually works, that's great.

13 hours ago, YellowJersey said:

The question I've always had about space-based solar is the cost: how much Earth-based capacity could be added for the cost of a single space-based solar plant? Would it be worth it? Think about it like this, if you could install 100 ground based panels for the cost of a single space-based panel, would it make more sense to put that money into Earth-based renewables and related infrastructure?

In this case I think it's more an issue of room, the UK has limited space to place solar panels.

[pythonmegapixel]

14 minutes ago, Sauron said:

In this case I think it's more an issue of room, the UK has limited space to place solar panels.

The proportion of the space that is actually being used is tiny though. The majority of buildings that could have solar panels on the roof don't, and that's before even considering the space set aside for other uses (such as vast areas of car parking) that could perfectly reasonably have them added.

[Senzelian]

Cool.
Now can we get back to reality and sort the damn solar panel shortage out? They're unobtanium right now.

[Donut417]

7 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

Cool.
Now can we get back to reality and sort the damn solar panel shortage out? They're unobtanium right now.

Get used to it. This is how it is for now on. Its going to be years before the supply chain is sorted out. This is what happens when you push all your production to a few countries.This is what happens when companies dont appreciate their workforce and now they have to do more with less people and thats going to further leads to shortages. 

[Senzelian]

3 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Get used to it. This is how it is for now on. Its going to be years before the supply chain is sorted out. This is what happens when you push all your production to a few countries.This is what happens when companies dont appreciate their workforce and now they have to do more with less people and thats going to further leads to shortages. 

Tbh I don't think it's a shortage. Just seems like people really want solar panels rn because of gas, oil and electricity prices shooting up.
It's still easy to find solar panels on eBay, it's just not very convenient and so of course only the major brands and suppliers are out of stock. That's at least my theory.

[Mark Kaine]

18 hours ago, leadeater said:

That's not what it means or what they were saying. On Earth we have weather, in space you do not. I'll tell you right now my solar panels on my roof do not have 100% theoretical output 100% of the day nor during standard daylight hours. Sun angle, weather, temperature all affect panel output so the same panel in space will be more effective than one on Earth.

Of course space got weather. 

 

 

it's not just semantics either. of course it's not the same as on earth, but it wouldn't be difficult to imagine space weather could influence such "energy transmissions"?  

you know the same stuff starlink has been shown to be susceptible to.

 

Or maybe not, but there's definitely "space weather" according to NASA. and they also check this constantly.  

 

https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/

 

"Tuesday kp2"  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Mark Kaine]

6 hours ago, pythonmegapixel said:

The proportion of the space that is actually being used is tiny though. The majority of buildings that could have solar panels on the roof don't, and that's before even considering the space set aside for other uses (such as vast areas of car parking) that could perfectly reasonably have them added.

agreed. pretty much every house here seems to have solar panels (country side, so lots of houses with actual roofs)... but theres always space for them in big cities too i guess, just lacks the will, and i guess people think solar panels are kinda ugly maybe? i don't think so, actually they look kinda cool. 

[Brooksie359]

14 hours ago, thechinchinsong said:

Nuclear in most places is gonna take 10 or 20 years to build cause of regulations and pushback depending on where you live. Solar and Wind for all their faults are much quicker to get online. At this point it's still relatively cheap, relatively "eco friendly", and relatively quick to build so I can see why governments choose these instead of nuclear. If you have the ability to plan long term like China though, you can afford to build lots of nuclear as they have been and continue to do. Too bad in other places we got NIMBYs and nuclear scaremongers and a lack of financial incentive to do it so it never gets done.

Actually the biggest reason why nuclear energy has gone to the wayside in the US is because of regulations that require energy providers to provide energy as cheap as they can and unfortunately nuclear is just plain more expensive than natural gas and wind/solar. That being said nuclear is much better in terms of stable output of energy compared to wind and solar while also being cleaner than natural gas. 

[Brooksie359]

20 hours ago, pythonmegapixel said:

It's not ideal. But it's still possible for a domestic rooftop solar panel installation to pay for itself over its lifetime, especially if you time usage carefully (i.e. if possible doing things that use a lot of electricity when it's sunny outside)

Oh I am not saying that we shouldn't put solar panels in areas that wouldn't be used otherwise but I also know that if we could have more sources of solar then we will be better off. 

[jagdtigger]

7 hours ago, Donut417 said:

This is what happens when you push all your production to a few countries.

I think think its more of an issue of "lets push polluting production elsewhere so we can meet the unrealistic goals we set".