China starts testing tech to harvest solar energy from orbiting panels
- Reference: 1629180907
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/08/17/china_orbiting_solar_panel_tech_tests/
- Source link:
The project member, Zhong Yuanchang, is a professor at Chongqing University's School of Microelectronics and Communication Engineering. The power plant, called the Bishan Space Solar Power Station Experimental Base, or Bishan Base, is located in the Bishan district, about a 45-minute drive from the university. The base has a checkered past - it was conceptualized in 2010, but has started and stopped since as political and financial pressures intervened. As of June, the project is decidedly on.
The Earth-based station is designed to collect solar energy wirelessly from solar panel power stations in orbit. Solar power collected in space has the advantage of being unaffected by weather or that pesky thing called "night".
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Bishan base is slated to be China’s first large-scale power station facility for testing, integrating observing and cultivating this new way of harnessing power. But for now, the researchers are building a small-scale test power station for use in 2030, and to do that, the team must test transmissions from low altitudes, before moving on to two km altitudes using ultra-high voltage power transmissions, before finally transmitting wirelessly from orbit. By 2050, China has dreams of a full on gigawatt-scale commercial space solar power station.
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Zhong [4]told China Science Daily that for now, the research team is using high-altitude balloons as a floating platform to carry out the 300 m altitude microwave power transmission tests.
[5]Wireless powersats promise clean, permanent, abundant energy. Sound familiar?
[6]8 years ago another billionaire ploughed millions into space to harvest solar power and beam it back down to Earth
[7]It's all in the mind: Thought-command slot car racing in the city of the future
The concept of solar panels beaming wireless power back to Earth is not new. In 1941 Isaac Asimov described such technology in his science fiction short story Reason and in the early 1970s Peter Glaser received a patent for a design to transmit power from satellites to Earth using microwaves.
NASA has explored the concept several times, and Japan's space agency (JAXA) began developing a space solar power system in 1998 that is still running.
The US Naval Research Laboratory has ongoing tests and labs exploring the technology, and [8]Caltech is having a stab at it using the funds of a recently revealed anonymous billionaire's donation.
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The UK Space Energy Initiative has also [10]commissioned research and private British company [11]International Electric is promising to eventually beam power straight down to static and mobile devices using its phased array, CASSIOPeiA.
But for now in China, clean solar energy anytime day or night might have to wait for the Chongqing University, Zhong, and the testing balloon to take new heights.®
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[4] http://news.sciencenet.cn/htmlnews/2021/8/463245.shtm
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/09/wireless_powersats/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/05/donald_bren_sspp_gift/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/12/futurelab_emotiv/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/05/donald_bren_sspp_gift/
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[10] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-government-commissions-space-solar-power-stations-research
[11] https://www.internationalelectric.com/
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
By definition that is not the case. The solar satellite will be hundreds of miles above the planet, so it is soaking up energy that has missed us completely.
However, I do believe that it is better to have a solar satellite than a raft of coal-based power stations that spew continuously into the atmosphere.
What I am curious about is how well they are going to control the retransmission of power. I really would like this tech to work, but I'd also rather not be fried walking the dog.
No. The energy just radiates back into space.
It's like the difference between heating a house and insulating a house. If you heat a house you have to pump in energy all the time - when you stop it cools down. Pumping in energy from Solar Power Satellites doesn't do long term heating.
If you insulate a house it stays warm without any extra energy input. Climate change is driven by CO2 and Methane trapping heat and stopping it radiating to space, not by individual energy inputs.
The power input from the sun is vastly greater than all the power generated by humans, and that is what is trapped and causes climate change. Extra heating from satellite power is far too small to notice.
"Too small to notice" is exactly what our forebears used to say about all kinds of pollution when thinking at a planetary level.
Turns out, these things are cumulative.
The sun hits us with about 175,000 TW of power. China currently has something over 2 TW of generating capacity, and there is every likelihood that figure will double within about 30 years. If we assume that the processes of energy transport and conversion at the receiving end are likely to be less than perfectly efficient, then if China went over wholly to this tech, we could be looking at as much as 10-20 TW being added from China alone.
Okay, it beats generating the power from coal and gas. But it's not nothing.
Hope
Although I am ever hopeful after I put my cynical hat on i doubt the UK will do more than "investigate" solar power from orbit. All talk, little action seems to be the UK's mantra.
When you think that Russsian income is not that much different to the UK and we appear to spend almost nothing in these new technologies.....
It would be nice if politians could get of their ar*ses and actually do something. But then after the fiasco of Brexit with this super deal that Bojo failed to negotiate and has been trying to squirm himself out of everr since....
problem
So geosynchrous orbit gets more crowded. There will still be multiple 80 minute blackouts a year as the orbiting stations are eclipsed. One wonders if the old concept of a few very large, possibly inhabited geosynchrous stations serving large areas and connecting to each other might make for a less crowded sky, as well as hardware that can be upgraded as technology changes. Add comms to orbiting power stations means single platform, multiuse with no station power issues, mostly.
However, more energy will be sent to Earth. Not a lot compared to total solar budget, but the panic merchants need something to fear
>Solar power collected in space has the advantage of being unaffected by weather
Is transmission of energy back to Earth also unaffected by weather?
Beams
Didn't Charles Stross rename the power transmission beams from the satellites to the ground station? Orbiting Death Rays wasn't it ?
An exercise only.
It seems unlikely that such a system can be cost effective.
Roast Vulture
Will we see Vultures and other flying birds dropping from the sky - ready cooked?
--> Penguins (and Turkeys) should be safe, unless there is an errant satellite
If it was me...
I'd also be putting the receiving station 45 minutes' drive from where I was sitting.
I hope this is energy that would've been absorbed by the earth anyway. If it's not then it's adding to global warming!