Studying How to Bring Solar Power Down to Earth
PARIS (ESA PR) — Solar energy generation keeps on becoming cheaper and more efficient, but some basic limitations will always apply: solar panels can only generate power during the daytime, and much of the sunlight is absorbed by the atmosphere as it shines downward. So ESA is working on the concept of collecting solar power up in orbit, where sunlight is up to 11 times more intense than across European territory, then beaming it down to the ground for use.
As part of that effort, a new project looks into designing solar-power satellites, which would become the largest structures ever built in space. Frazer-Nash Consultancy will study the modular construction of solar-power satellites, to efficiently dissembling them as they come to their end-of-life for reuse or recycling.
Supported through the Discovery element of ESA’s Basic Activities, this project was initiated through ESA’s Open Space Innovation Platform, seeking out promising new ideas for space. Find out more about this and other recent OSIP activities here.
27 responses to “Studying How to Bring Solar Power Down to Earth”
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wish this would take off
The business case for it is very weak while the cost estimates are mostly just guesswork due to the numerous unknowns, so they are in the same category of reliability as the estimates were for the Space Shuttle and JWST.
and starship
But Elon Musk’s Starship is actually being built so the costs, and if it works, will be known soon. SBSP is still in the paper study phase where it has been since 1968 when the first study was written. So it is still just a vision…
agreed one of the big unknowns in SBSP is transportation
And, how many slots in the geostationary arc, will one of these things take up and how much are those slots worth?
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
I’m thinking one slot as the physical dimensions of the vehicles are dwarfed by the actual volume of Geo orbit. Off the top of my head, I’m thinking that current Geo birds are out of unaided visual range of each other. Also seems that communications and other functions could ride along on a monster unit. It would be interesting to know how much each slot is worth if there are serious competing functions here.
The number of Slots for SBSP would depend on the frequency the ITU assigns to their use and the separation the ITU determines is needed to prevent interference. But Slots are expensive if they are in a prime location. I recall one nation, Mexico I believe, selling one over the Western Hemisphere for around $600 million in the early 1990’s.
Likely the ITU will do what it did with Comsats and assign Slots for SBSP to governments or NGOs, like IntelSat, and then let them assign the slots by whatever method they choose to operators of SBSP systems.
Gama wasn’t the first to propose it, but it sounds like someone should look into statites for synchronous orbits inclined to the equator.
Are you joking for April 1st?
You do know the spacing is about RF spectrum allocation?
Depends on the specifics of the SPS operation. Narrow beam to rectenna in a different spectrum might not be a problem. Physical size was in my thoughts on that one as there seem to be hundreds of miles per slot. I would assume that designers would work around spectrum problems before starting initial design, much less hardware.
One of the things I wonder about is an SPS constellation in a much lower orbit just outside the worst of the Van Allens with steerable beams. Could reduce the initial size requirements considerably. Random thoughts, not a suggestion or call to action.
that certainly would be one of the questions…
The Green New Space Deal, with Space Solar Power by way of lunar factories as the solution to climate change. Start with an international 91 percent tax rate on billionaires.
And awaaaaaay we go!
Wasteful governments stealing massive amounts of money from productive businessmen seems like a bad plan to me.
“Productive businessmen” are wrecking the planet. That is bad. The looming catastrophe and immense human suffering means nothing to a certain kind of person. And that makes them bad in my view. But their view is of course completely different as they see human life as down the list of priorities. Money as the god of this world is what they have chosen. That disgusts me.
I basically see support for SBSP as a cult among the older Space Advocates, along with the proposed O’Neill habitats. Both require engineering and construction techniques for building mega-structures in space that are generations away and it is why neither has made much progress since the 1970’s. Every so often they are able to get some token funding like this that keeps their cult alive by doing another study, but these studies never lead to any bending of metal or funding to reduce the huge technical risk. Sadly, far too much of space advocacy is built on decades old ideas based on an outdated early 20th Century economic view of the world.
Can’t never could.
SPS can also serve as antenna farms, sunshades, etc.
Have you ever seen Al Globus’s proposals for space solar power? They start out much more modestly (small enough to fit on an F9), with conservative economics. No orbital construction, no multibillion-dollar structures, just a focus on what may be economically practical in the present day.
Haven’t seen these. What is the useful power delivery to the ground?
They’re a bit old now, so current numbers would likely be better, but at the time Globus envisioned ~1.2-6.2 MW (depending on overall efficiency) delivered by a 240m-diameter satellite.
Here is the presentation and paper on it. I have been following this since the 1970’s and have most of the reports on it, or links to them. There hasn’t been anything that has moved SBSP beyond the need for massive government investment. If it made sense from an investment perspective you would see startups and venture capitalists focused on raising money for it.
https://space.nss.org/space…
Thanks.
The question is if they are economically practical where are the investors? Just showing it’s possible is just the first step, next is showing its potential ROI is better than alternative investments. Otherwise it is dependent on the government funding.
There’s a company out in California supposedly working on SBSP. I suspect they’re defunct but I don’t know for sure. Donald Bren gave Caltech $100 million starting in 2013 for research, and there are a handful of other groups working on SBSP technologies. Otherwise, I think the perception that space solar will always be unprofitable is so strong that it will take something like the military to drive early deployments. Sometimes it takes a madman to push initially unprofitable technologies until they become competitive.
I’m not going to claim energy beamed down to Earth is guaranteed to be competitive, but I’m also not going to make the equally false claim that just because it’s not presently seeing large sums of investment money that it isn’t worthwhile. For comparison, it took decades to go from from the Commercial Space Launch act in 1984 to SpaceX, despite the potential ROI of reusable launch vehicles. Yes, before the company was founded there were multiple billion-dollar investments, but none with the moxie Musk has demonstrated.
But there were also a lot of startups looking to find the solution to lowering launch costs before SpaceX. But virtually none looking at power beaming even for Earth based applications. You must ask why that is?
Because people are small-minded, fearful, lazy; because received wisdom says something cannot be done – regardless if there were many launch startups, the vast, vast majority were wrong in their belief they could make money until very recently (and even now many are still losing money) – and few people question that; even with your comments what I perceive is that the barriers to even trying are not financial or technical, they’re psychological. That said, I know of at least three or four startups working on SBSP. It will likely take many years before someone comes along with both the financial resources and the will to make it happen, just as was the case for space launch.
I’ve seen more than one engineer or scientist assume that we should only build multigigawatt-scale satellites; that we should only use microwaves for transmission; that we can only use technologies no newer than about 2005; and then the cost becomes impossible. Robert Zubrin is one example of this, choosing an approach that was so conservative and blinkered, his methodology was as bad as reusing Shuttle parts to make a new rocket. Though, even he admitted that it could still possibly be financially practical. Many people also assume that the only market is suburban Americans, as if the rest of the world does not exist. Bad assumptions get piled on bad assumptions.
Please don’t. Use solar to power the moon and mars, but skip earth.