Space based Solar power

 

Or SBSP in short.

The day I’m writing this there seems to be a world energy crisis. Energy prices have skyrocketed due to increased demand but also at this moment due to the Ukraine war. But I believe that energy demand will stay high and so the prices also even after the Ukraine war has ended. This is because world keeps on developing and countries are catching up with the west in terms of development and so is the energy need per person of those developing countries. What’s not helping is global warming that will cause for more need for electrical based cooling (air conditioning) and sadly as probably source of that electricity is fossil fuel based the global warming will increase. Example: Tokyo Warned of Power Crunch as Japan Endures Heat Wave 

So with this in mind, developing nations are needing more energy for their industries and for their citizens, demand in developed nations also increasing. I don’t know if we have reached peak fossil fuels yet (this is peak when we have highest fossil fuel consumption of history but no new sources) but we are probably close to it.  Fossil fuels are finite, pollute incredibly and resources used to play political games, like Ukraine war is showing by Putin using the Russian gas lines to blackmail other nations into staying silent but off course it’s also financing that dreadful war.

So how will deal with this energy crisis, we could build more nuclear power plants for which I’m not against but not as a primary source of energy. I think our primary source of energy should be as much as possible renewable green energy but with a strong back bone of nuclear energy for those spikes of usage or when it’s cloudy (or night) or the wind isn’t blowing (referring to solar and wind energy).

The technology

A couple of weeks back I came across a news publication that an UK based firm (the U.K.Space Energy Initiative)  is looking seriously at launching/building space based solar power and transmitting the generated energy back to earth using microwaves. Years back I had asked someone who I thought was an expert about the transmitting of power from space to earth wirelessly and he told me it was impossible as the radio waves will just heat up/loose energy to the atmosphere. Now reading more about the subject it seems that person misinformed me. One of the goals of these 50 British technology organizations working together as the UK Space Energy Initiative is make the UK meet its target of zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The website space.com has a very good summary about what this UK firms goal is and how they will achieve this.

 This short documentary from The FinancialTimes on YouTube explains space based solar power well.

As does this special about power satellites from Isaac Arthur. He explains well the pro’s and cons of transmitting power from space to earth. For me a big con would be introducing new/extra energy into the earth ecosystems that’s already overloading.  At the end of this special, Isaac I feel, starts dwelling off topic and starts talking about megastructures but the first 2/3 are very informative on power satellites. I would bookmark Isaac Arthur is you like these kind of topics as his youtube channel is full of this kind of stuff.

Also worth reading is this Wikipedia entry on space based solar power .

The verdict

I don’t know of solar energy satellites are feasible at this moment. As from what I’ve read and seen you need huge orbital structures of many square km2’s. Getting that into space with the launch costs of rockets nowadays is I believe not profitable, not talking about the technological hurdles of assembling such a thing in space and what if something goes wrong? There isn’t a space shuttle with astronauts you can send to fix a defect. And if you could that would also cost enormous amounts of money.  I would personally only build a SBSP satellite as a proof of concept, for scientific purposes.

Other issues I have is that the rectennas on earth who receive the transmitted power need a huge area of land. The UK Space Energy Initiative talks about needing at least 7 x 12km of land for receiving station. Imagine if you need to supply a large percentage of the economy with that energy and what sizes of land need to be reserved for ground rectennas. Besides that the rectennas only have an efficiency of 85%, meaning 15% of transmitted energy is lost.

Talking about losses, the converting of solar energy to electric to radio waves to electric itself comes with big losses. It’s very inefficient.

And also you might get a lot of opposition if you want to transmit power using microwaves to earth from all sorts of groups. Last week a Dutch health organization reportedthat living near high voltage towers or working with high voltage systems increases the chances of cancer and alzheimers. Imagine that. There are now already people panicking about 5G telephony cell towers.

Wishlist

Personally as an European I want the following:

• Clean energy

• Energy independence from non EU countries

• Reliable energy

• An European renewable energy grid

So in my mind that means renewable energy (the clean and energy independence part) and nuclear energy as backbone (for the reliable part).  In for example Norway and Sweden they are capable of generating lots of clean energy from hydro power but due to European politics aren’t able to export the excesses of that to other European nations. That’s a damn shame. The Norwegian coastline might for example also be very well fit for wind energy or tidal energy but European states need to invest in means of exporting that clean energy and stop producing energy only for their own nations needs.

 

Look at the above map of number of solar hours and intensity in Europe. I would personally investigate building a solar plant in for example Spain or Portugal, have that power plant pump water uphill or melt salt to generate energy at lower energy situations (night time) but especially build that solar station with energy export in mind. Maybe Italy, Greece and Turkey would also be appropriate for solar plants.