Posted on 07/24/2008 4:27:55 AM PDT by shove_it
AS we face $4.50 a gallon gas, we also know that alternative energy sources — coal, oil shale, ethanol, wind and ground-based solar — are either of limited potential, very expensive, require huge energy storage systems or harm the environment. There is, however, one potential future energy source that is environmentally friendly, has essentially unlimited potential and can be cost competitive with any renewable source: space solar power.
Science fiction? Actually, no — the technology already exists. A space solar power system would involve building large solar energy collectors in orbit around the Earth. These panels would collect far more energy than land-based units, which are hampered by weather, low angles of the sun in northern climes and, of course, the darkness of night.
Once collected, the solar energy would be safely beamed to Earth via wireless radio transmission, where it would be received by antennas near cities and other places where large amounts of power are used. The received energy would then be converted to electric power for distribution over the existing grid. Government scientists have projected that the cost of electric power generation from such a system could be as low as 8 to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, which is within the range of what consumers pay now...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Oh, I agree. Jerry Pournelle has been touting "solar power satellites" since forever. And the approach made some sense back in the day when the only solar cells were made from crystalline semi-conductor grade silicon, so you absolutely "had" to maximize the "per cell productivity". And the best way to do THAT was to get the cell where maximum sunlight hit it 24/7---a condition found only in space.
But Nanosolar's invention is a true "paradigm-shifting", game-changine piece of technology. A single production line (not a single production PLANT, but one line in such a plant), operated at their tested maximum speed of 100 ft/sec can turn out 1GW (the equivalent of a 1000 MW nuke plant) per year. According to the Nanosolar head honcho, cell quality actually improves at the higher production rates. Note that the 100ft/min feed rate is not the maximum the equipment is capable of---newspaper offset printing is run at 2000 ft/min--but they have not yet tested at these higher rates
30 years ago, during the Arab oil embargo, this was widely discussed. Cheap oil shot it down, and Enviros cheered. Actually space industry would be the first application and no power would need to be beamed to earth.
FFTTTTT.....nothing left but some ash.
I'm not too hot on this energy beam stuff. If the transmitting station were hit by space junk, meteor, etc, the beam could end up burning a pattern in the surface of the earth.
This could also be done intentionally.
Now if we were to use a big earth to geosynchronous orbit extension cord, then maybe it would be safer?!?!?
Problems solved and no gigawatt masers needed.
Besides, did these idiots even consider what an ultra high powered maser would do to the atmosphere and weather patterns? Permanent high pressure zone anyone?
He want's to take posession of The Soul Collector!! :-P
Like post 2 says. The wing-nuts will object, if for no other reason than “This could be used as a weapon!” Sounds cool though.
I propose a more efficient solution: EDBOEC, energy delivery via big, orange extension cords.
Just like the space elevator.
Got a feeling that “environmentalist” will find any number of reasons to object.
Absolutely. Bear in mind that this increases the amount of energy delivered to the Earth, which means that this will cause global warming. Unless we make giant space heatsinks to balance them.
Maybe we can launch an equal amount of liberials into space. With all the hot air they generate, we could reach a balance.
And people are worried about cell phone radiation?
This kind of scheme would really zap people near the earth receivers
The beam would end up kind of "wide" by the time it reached earth
Yep, with honey or gravy - your choice.
Add this idea to all the other alternative energy schemes proposed so far. We would have big orange extension cords sooner than this.
But to be fair, solar and wind power are not losers, they are good supplements for buildings and homes down here. They are not, however, good power sources for cars and trucks. Cars and trucks require oil, or else we are going to have to build a lot more coal and nuke power plants for electricity. I have to get to work 30 miles away.
It cannot be done in a manner which imparts a net gain in energy and which is economically feasible to the citizens of the Earth.
There, fixed it.
Clouds of scatters in equatorial orbits at otherwise useless altitudes. The astronomers will hate it. We'll give them a dozen ten meter orbiting telescopes to make up.
Can you imagine the reaction? "Several birds flew through the energy downbeam from the Aries power satillite today and became mild dizzy. NO BLOOD FOR CHEAP ENERGY DOWNLINK!"
Or a foil mirror at the L1 Lagrange point with just enough cross section to exactly balance the additional energy downlinked. Station keeping would be interesting. It would cast a constant penumbral shadow on the equator which would be a relatively mild annoyance.
If the constellation were a phased array, mutually coherent (easily implemented) each could beam at the same point on the earth, the interference pattern, i.e., the beamwidth of all of the elements would be proportional to the wavelength divided by the effective width of the constellation. Extremely small.
If one satellite failed the effect outside of the intended target area would be comparable what would be experienced if only that one satellite were radiating. A few million watts over an area the size New England would be a negligible health risk, microwatts per square meter. Each satellite could weakly modulate its signal to provide a health indication of the array with out substantially defocussing the beam. Current phased array radars with thousands of elements radiate periodically into a near field horn, modulating one phase shifter at a time to provide real time monitoring of the array status. It's like weighting a mosquito on an elephant, doable if you have a high enough SNR and weight your elephant often enough. The modulation waveform could be like a cell phone's CDMA waveform, a set of orthogonal signals, which can individually be picked out of the cacophony of competing signals.
If I read your post correctly, all the satellites would beam their energy at the same point on the Earth. I think your example of New England is entirely appropriate; I too would beam the energy there. I am not too worried about health effects, but I am skeptical about the practicality of such a power scheme. In your opinion, how large would the power collection antenna have to be? Would it be an array of antennas spread over some area of land? How efficient could this whole solar-to-radio-to-electricity thing really be?
The conversion efficiency would probably only be about 25% efficient end to end. The solar flux at the earths orbit is approximately 1600 Watts/meter-squared. You’d need about one square mile of orbiting collectors per gigawatt delivered power. The power could safely be focused on area the size of a football field, the collecting antenna. Spreading the receiving antennas would be unnecessary and probably unwise. You need to spread the transmitters to effect a small ground spot and to keep them “decorrelated” in the event of the failure of any one satellite.
I just used New England as the foot print size of any one transmitter as an example.
I’m not at all convinced it would be economically feasible.
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