Solar power.... Yeah right

We all know its a death ray, Just admit it.

I'm expecting a future milestone to read "Moon base".

Didnt the reg put something up about this a few years ago. Sounds very familiar. Could be a good idea

Good idea?

As a death ray perhaps.... gee look at our solar powered death ray.....zap.

But the core claim "works at night" won't work if it beams down to the daylight portion of the earth. Unless your collection and distribution points moves too, to stay under your death ray, so you're receving staion is always under your solar array on the daylight side of the planet!

Or suppose you have multiple receiving stations. Can you imagine, they turn it from Station 1 to Station 2, and since the transmitter and solar array are integrated, one and the same, you cannot turn it off, so you zap everything the path between the two stations?

But death ray! Totally makes sense.

Geostationary is pretty far out, so it can be nighttime on the ground without the satellite being in shadow. For most of the year, equatorial tilt should take the satellite out of shadow 24h/day. The longest time to spend in shadow is only 72 minutes/day, at the equinoxes.

Put it that far out and you've got the transmission loss. None of this makes sense except as a death ray.

It's not even worth making solar panels track the sun for most domestic setups, here on earth, its so damn cheap to just mount more panels.

If they actually want to do anything for solar, I would suggest pricing storage... like you can sell back electricity to the grid, price storage, so you can sell storage capacity to the grid. So people stick more solar on their roof, and sell the excess to the grid, and others store it for them.

This is old tech, Asimov was describing it in 1941.

If only that had been mentioned in the article, eh?

I must be getting old, I'd've sworn that paragraph wasn't there earlier - which is why I posted.

> Asimov was describing it in 1941.

A lavish colour illustration depicting the receiving station of such a scheme was used as an advertisement for a company near me who are famous for their marine diesel engines. The advert was in, iirc, the brochure for the Festival of Britain 1951.

The copy was along if the lines of "In the future we may have energy beamed down from space. Until that time, you can rely upon the proven power of Lister diesel engines"

And 70 years into the future we have no power beamed down from space, but plenty of old listers chugging on forever (or until the loonies and greenies ban them).

All hail the mighty SL2 and its brethern.. !

... proven power of Lister diesel engines

Bet Kryten has something to say about that.

Asimov described so many things you'd think he was making them up.

It might be cool if it really can be made to work though. There would have to be oversight about noting it into a death ray. Joking aside - I wonder how much would be lost in the microwave beam till it reaches the earth. I know next to nothing about any of this so it is pure speculation.

I think there will be three factors at play here; beam divergence, atmospheric attenuation, and collector efficiency.

If the beam divergence is kept low, and the collectors are wide enough to "catch" the whole beam, it’s not a problem. At the other end of the scale, if the transmission is omnidirectional, then the power drops off with the square of the distance.

Atmospheric attenuation depends on the wavelength used, the thickness of the atmosphere it will have to travel through (which will depend on the angle; directly above would be the lowest attenuation, and on the horizon the highest), and the weather - water vapour absorbs microwaves, to varying degrees, again depending on the wavelength, which is how a microwave oven works.

Collector efficiency is basically a measure of how much energy is captured by the receiver, which is effectively acting like an aerial. A quick google of the subject suggests that we can expect this to be better than 90%

So, judicious choice of wavelength, to avoid any major atmospheric absorption, and a well focused beam means it woudl hopefully be up to 90% transmission efficiency, which will be well above the actual efficiency of the solar panels themselves.

That judicious choice of wavelength probably matches one of the bands currently used by astronomers since low atmospheric absorption is pretty much the most important thing in both use cases. They will be delighted to hear that someone now wants to inject several GW of interference in that band.

I wonder how big the sidebands will be? Could this be the death of (terrestrial) WiFi as well?

Harness the solar power to avoid paying tax.

Is it the true reason for such project?

She's already accused Jewish millionaires of funding space lasers beaming the suns energy from space to start Californian wild fires.. what will she think when she hears a Jewish millionaire is funding something this space-sun-energy project?

[1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2021/01/30/did-rep-marjorie-taylor-greene-blame-a-space-laser-for-wildfires-heres-the-response/

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2021/01/30/did-rep-marjorie-taylor-greene-blame-a-space-laser-for-wildfires-heres-the-response/

"Oops. Just lost Peoria!"

Beam control is important.

https://vimeo.com/355556831

> Collecting solar power in space and transmitting the energy wirelessly to Earth through microwaves

And if they do it right wrong they will zap all the nacent constellations of thousands and thousands of internet satellites that the likes of Musk, etc. are spending $$$ billions on launcing.

What could possibly go wrong?

Global devastation & a return to primitive feudalistic society. The rebooted Eagle comic covered this in "The Tower King" in the 80's.

Where's Mick Tempest when you need him?

Clearly they don't think the earth is overheating fast enough and want to accelerate the process.

90% efficiency? That would take a concentrated beam. What happens when, not if, something get too close? Birds? A curious hang Glider, A wayward plane?

Would it burn a hole through the clouds during storms? All satellite signals walk around a bit. How big would the dead zone around the receiver be? What of maintenance of the ground receiver? Can the transmitter be shutdown and powered up without too much hassle? What about making sure it stays off during ground maintenance? Where does the padlock go to ensure that some middle manglement dude doesn't power it up when people are on the ground working around the receiver?

One never hears the answers to questions like these. Like the carbon fiber space elevator, this sounds too much like pie in the sky.

It's overly complicated.

Option A) Roll out lots of low cost panels in deserts around the world. Dirt cheap to install. Easy to reach for maintenance. Cost of the panels approx $200/kW

Option B) put some expensive panels in orbit. SpaceX are currently charging about $1 million to launch 200kg. More for higher orbits. That's 200 sq m of panels, max power (solar constant x efficiency) a generous 400W/sq m, admittedly 24/7. Panel costs? They're going to be several times the cost of ground-based ones.

So cost for 1MW on ground about $200,000

Cost for 1MW in orbit - $12,500,000 in launch costs plus panel costs (another $1mn?). Yes, costs will fall, but a hundred-fold?

Generating 24/7 compared to maybe 10/7 doesn't offset that massive launch costs and extra infrastructure costs.

Agree, solar panels in space to provide power on earth is a definite R. Goldberg solution. Technically possible, but at a huge cost. Maybe if that space elevator gets built... naw.

The obvious solution to reliable, reasonably priced solar power is to add energy storage, and/or use solar energy to create "green" fuels for vehicles, neatly meshing the intermittent nature of solar with the energy density/power/recharge time problems of current BEV technology. Could even be batteries, but doesn't need to be the expensive Li-Ion type since weight and bulk are not as important for a fixed installation.

Sure, there are increases in cost if you add storage. But it's GOT to be cheaper than lifting solar panels into geosynchronous orbit, PLUS needing the collector/converter equipment on the ground.

A lot of deserts are not so easy to reach, and solar panels in deserts tend to get covered in dust, worn down by sandblasting, or buried quickly under shifting dunes. Temperatures also vary wildly from above 40°C during the day to below zero at night.

The big advantage of putting solar panels in space is that pretty much the only things you have to deal with are micrometeorites, and if you make them modular, you can probably easily cope with the odd module getting holed every now and then, and deal with the small loss of coverage that may result. The temperature of space is a constant, of a few Kelvin left over from the big bang, and the only source of heat is radiation from the sun, which you will be pointing at 24/7, so the panels will quickly reach thermal equilibrium. As another poster pointed out, things in geostationary orbit only get shade for at most 72 minutes at a time, so that's the only regular thermal stress they will be experiencing.

Compare that to having to regularly drive out into the middle of a desert in heat that will quickly kill you, to un-bury an array of panels to replace a load that have been blasted to shards by the wind, or failed from metal fatigue because the mountings are getting a daily 50°C temperature shift.

Option A) Roll out lots of low cost panels in deserts around the world. Dirt cheap to install.

Cheap to install the panels. Expensive to install a government that's going to prevent the power supply being held to ransom for political ends or being knocked out by jihadis.

Based on the linked article, some maths:

* 220 billion kilowatts (global energy need by 2030) = 220000 gigawatts

* 1 satellite yields 1 gigawatt

* assume 1 satellite : 1 receiver therefore 220000 receivers

* transmission beam is 60 feet wide, so we'll assume that's a diameter on a cylindrical beam

Based on this, we can assume that meeting the 220000 gigawatt power needs will require 220000 receivers, each covering 2827.4 sq ft (262.68 sq m). That's a combined area of about 14279.8 arces (57789.6 sq km). That's ever so slightly more than the area of Croatia.

That's a lot of government expropriation and materials investment.

Just put a giant mirror up in orbit, and solve the night-time problem instead!

You jest, I think, but putting the cheap bit in orbit and keeping the expensive stuff down here is probably a more practical solution, and the visible waveband is one of the ones that the atmosphere passes.

As an added bonus, we can see the beam, which might encourage people to get the pointing accuracy right before they start chucking a few GW down it.

"You jest, I think, but putting the cheap bit in orbit and keeping the expensive stuff down here is probably a more practical solution, and the visible waveband is one of the ones that the atmosphere passes."

I don't know about that. After all, isn't there a reason the sky is tinted blue?

Ah, I love all the instant replies of why it won't work and should never be considered.

Warms my heart, it does.

Ah, I love all the instant replies of why it won't work and should never be considered.

OK, so tell us how tall poppies can generate power then.

Those instant replies are backed by established science and easy-to-follow calculations. If you take that as proof that you are on the right lines then you are a classic (and probably irredeemable) conspiracy theorist.

There is a big difference between "good economical idea" and "infeasible project."

Beaming power down from space would have to be economical in comparison to building effective power plants on dirt. And honestly, a power plant Earth-side is still necessary, because the RF will still need to be converted to something the electrical grid can handle.

The conversion loss is significant. First, the solar energy must be converted to electrical energy, which is then used to power the RF transmitter. Then there is the transmission loss between space and ground. Then there is the conversion loss in the power plant. And of course, that power plant in space is going to need servicing.

So which is more economical? Taxing the shit out of excessive power usage to drive people to save power, (change your light bulbs, buy machines that can't run Crysis or mine Bitcoin), or tossing up power plants in spaaaaaaaaaace ?

It's stupid and expensive compared to desert power generation. Big mirrors and steam might even beat photovoltalic.

Then make synthetic LPG with waste carbon.

Um, plot of Sahara?

The beam is a real issue. At best it's a cone with a huge spot on the ground. To avoid a massive dish in space you need maybe 100 Ghz to 400 GHz. Atmospheric adsorption is a problem. It's not scaleable to any sensibly small beam or big power. The power loss in generation of the microwaves is significant. A solar plant on the ground and big optical mirror in space is more sensible than this. This something for an SF story or a game like Sim City.

SF stories are NOT blueprints for future technology. Ursula Le Guin said they are entertainment, though some can have social comment or a warning.