Can someone explain to me why it makes more sense to put large, complex pieces of equipment in space where maintaining it is costly, and then beam power though the atmosphere, as opposed to putting simple, easily maintainable tech on the ground, with the input radiation already having traverse the atmosphere? Is there such an advantage power wise that this is worth doing?
Solar power in Germany has a ~1-2% capacity factor. Winter heating demand also means energy demand (and power prices) peak in the winter. So any renewable energy source at 50-100x high cost per kw/h (with nearly a 100% winter capacity factors) will be competitive with solar in the winter.
Power prices show huge temporal, seasonal, and geographic variance. So LCOE (Levelized Cost Of Energy - i.e. average cost) arguments miss that the ability to sell power when power prices are high is critical. Key thing that SBSP as an idea has going for it is high capacity factors at the time of high prices.
To your point, if the idea is to succeed, someone would have to make a SBSP plant that is way less complex than current proposals.
Winter heating in Germany is covered by gas, not electricity. There is no competition here. In fact, one could use surplus renewable energy at close to zero marginal cost to produce green LNG, the efficiency wouldn't matter. Store that gas for winter or something like that.
Solar on geosynchronous orbit is 24/7 power supply. Solar on land works only in day, and in northern latitudes like in central Europe it does not really work during winter (there are too little insulation, so production is on 10-15 % of summer values).
Firstly you're comparing silicon with vastly more expensive panels, there are a number of techs that have ~10-15% capacity factor (not 10% of 20%) in winter in the area 80% of the populations lives (and within easy transmission distance of 95% of the rest). Secondly you're comparing tracking with fixed systems.
Area is not remotely a limit, so the real question is can your space boondoggle go up for <10x the price per nameplate watt without wrecking the ionosphere, eliminating 2.4GHz comms, damaging ecology, and being unavailable to the 70% of the world that don't have a space program?
Then even if you do that, is the petajoules of energy you need to put it up there ever going to pay off or are you better off just burning the thousands of tonnes of methane or hydrogen required?
The article claims that someone wants to put power stations in space and transmit the power over long distances. If you're willing to do long-distance transmission (to central Europe), there are enough low-population area with much sunlight in winter, and the technology to generate solar power on the surface of the planet is cheap and getting cheaper.
Solar requires surprisingly little space. The city where I live now generates about 90% as much renewable electricity as its total average use, and it doesn't really show. Visitors don't say "wow, there really are a lot of solar panels here!" or anything like that. You don't have to look far to find some solar panels, and there a few geothermal facilities, but it's not immediately noticeable. It's been retrofitted to a densely populated city and doesn't really show.
Not really. If i look on average production for utility-scale power plants (e.g. [0]), i get average net production of 5 MW/km^2. Germany has average total primary energy consumption ~387 TW, so to satisfy it with solar, one would need to use ~20% of Germany area for solar power plants.
It is very rough estimate, on one hand, primary energy is often less efficient than electricity, on the other hand, it completely ignores the issue of seasonality of solar power, just comparing yearly averages.
You've cherry picked a project at 53 degrees north and come up with a value that is barely area constrained once you include wind in the mix. There are numerous countries south of 40 degrees where existing projects produce over double the power per area. Example: Nunez de Balboa which is mid latitude spain has an average capacity factor of 20% at a latitude where winter capacity is usually around 60% of summer -- easily hitting the constraints of >10% and within transmission distance where geopolitical, cost, and efficiency factors are manageable. Southern spain, italy and greece have some areas that are even better.
Moreover, the existence of a plant at 53 degrees with under half the capacity factor achievablein europe is strong evidence for the thesis that solar is both sufficiently cheap and small, otherwise it would have been built near munich, not hamburg.
Moreover you need to compare like for like. When the proposal is to spend tens or hundreds of euros per net watt on multi junction panels that can handle shock loads of 1000s of Gs using launch capabilities that don't exist, then compare against something other than the cheapest available previous generation modules.
A 29% efficient hybrid silicon perovskite panel would be an example. This would produce double to triple the net wattage again as they perform much better in partial cloud or with sunlight further from normal and with realistic projections for cost would be around €1 to €2 per net watt installed as a dedicated facility including land.
In total you're around a factor of 5-15 over what is necessary.
A reasonable proposal then puts your "20%" figure at something more like just putting panels on top of the built up and paved areas starting south of Nuremberg and only going north when you run out of space. So to conclude
It's in the second paragraph of the article: "The approach has several advantages over terrestrial solar power, including the absence of night and inclement weather and the lack of an atmosphere to attenuate the light from the sun."
Armchair moment: I have a _really_ hard time believing there could ever be a cost-effective way to make space Solar worthwhile. For the price of one football-sized field of solar panels in space (which I’m guessing on the low end might be $5-10 billion? Probably more though) how many terrestrial solar plants 10x that size could you build? And how much battery capacity could you build to store it over night, eliminating the major advantage of space solar anyways
Every study done on the concept basically show that its non viable unless you make some pretty extreme assumptions. And even then most of those studies are financial and don't take into account CO2 use form the rockets and other factors like limited launch site availability and so on.
Just a shockingly bad idea... Europe has phenomenally dollar potential already, on the ground, and what it couldn't get there it could much more easily compensate for with arrays in countries to it's south.
God forbid it might have to work with other countries for some of it's energy. It's already doing that and would absolutely need to do that to ever be able to build this project anyways
RE: "God forbid it might have to work with other countries for some of it's energy."
I'm all for countries cooperating, but we need to be aware of Europe's recent historical experience on finding reliable sources of energy and raw materials. Specifically:
1) Russia using Europe's money to fund it's invasion of Ukraine and blackmail the continent.
2) Colonial experiences in North Africa. Which, to Europe's credit, it's not interested in repeating. As only solar in north aferica can really solve the winter solar insolation issue - Europe is simply too far north.
To go to 100% carbon free you need "clean firm" power. And there's no real way to get that with out one of: Nuclear, Geothermal, SBSP, or Fusion. Plenty of arguments for Nuclear, but we need to admit there's a very short list of potential solutions here.
Europe isn't actually getting series about that. This is mostly just talk.
Europe is neither willing to invest in the rocket technology to make this happen nor has committed to financing of the solar based power or the necessary ground system.
And beyond space based solar is mostly a really bad idea anyway.
But I guess some people in Europe and specially Germany are willing to finance anything other then nuclear.
Ariane Space carried the James Webb to where it is now, and Ariane 6 is currently being developed, slowly but surely. If not, there is still SpaceX among others.
Germany kick startes solar early on only to have our lunch eaten bybthe Chinese manufacturers. Non the less, solar already was in 2018 cheaper then Hinckley, cheaper than coal and cheaper than gas per kWh in auctions for utility scale projects, same for wind. No idea why people still try ti ridicule solar and wind in 2022 if all numbers show something different.
Ariene 6 is basically useless for space solar power. Even if you assume Starship Space Solar doesnt make sense. With Ariane 6 its beyond insane and useless to even try.
Had Germany done the Grühnewende with mass constructing nuclear they would be done by now and likely German companies would be building nuclear plants in Poland and likely many other countries.
Germany could have spend the next 50 years building nuclear plants all over the world.
Honckley is a terrible example. Everybody know if you build a single PWR in a country with very little experiance its not gone be worth it. You need to build many to get learning effects, educate the work force.
If they had done that they could be finishing multible plants a year at a very cheap price. And that is even assume they built shitty PWRs rather then some next generation reactors.
Solar and Wind without Storage look good in the statistics but on a systematic level it causes many isses as well. Storage is still not solved so fossile will stay for a while yet. And even if you have storage a single matural disaster can cause a shortfall of electricity that overwhelms your storage.
Not to mention far more waste, far less attractive in term of livable envoironments. More land use and so on.
I mean sure if Europe wants to simple give 5-10 billion to a US cooperation that is destroying its own launch industry. That would be the exact opposite policy they had for the last 40 years.
France is so jelly of RocketLab that they spend a large sum of money to have its own micro-launcher despite the market already being hilariously flooded with companies.
If you want solar power in Northern Europe, just put collectors into southern Europe and put a DC long distance power transport line.
But why would you want solar? Norway and Sweden are already mostly green because of hydro and nuclear.
>I mean sure if Europe wants to simple give 5-10 billion to a US cooperation that is destroying its own launch industry.
The alternative is not getting the space-based solar power working for a very long time. They don't have the launch capacity. Also, they can do both, you know. It's not like they have to choose to forever give up all work on their launch industry to do one big project.
>If you want solar power in Northern Europe, just put collectors into southern Europe and put a DC long distance power transport line.
This might be doable, but it'd be interesting to see a good analysis comparing the two. Southern Europe is still pretty far north if you look at a globe, and doesn't get that much sunlight in the winter (though the southern tip of Italy is certainly better than Denmark, for instance). HVDC will still have significant losses over that distance, though I don't know how that compares to microwave transmission from space.
>But why would you want solar? Norway and Sweden are already mostly green because of hydro and nuclear.
Hydro is unsustainable and is not scalable. It's completely tapped out in developed nations, and it also causes huge ecosystem destruction. Nuclear is unpopular, and apparently having serious problems in France currently.
I mean, if you have followed the politics of European space, sure, in a fantasy world they just have money to do everything.
In reality they don't even want to spend a fraction of the money for either project.
> Hydro is unsustainable and is not scalable. It's completely tapped out in developed nations
Its not tapped out in Norway or Iceland but there is enough already, they don't need more.
> Nuclear is unpopular, and apparently having serious problems in France currently.
It has serious problem in France because the anti-nuclear forced tried to destroy nuclear for the last 10 years and deliberately stopped investing and maintaining. They want to force the reduction of nuclear. Arguable nuclear has been politically embattled for much longer.
And whatever problem nuclear might have, compared to the problems of space solar its a small problem.
>Its not tapped out in Norway or Iceland but there is enough already, they don't need more.
Apparently, Europe as a whole needs a lot more. Iceland is too far from mainland Europe to be any kind of electricity supplier anyway, and Norway is problematic too because power lines would have to cross the Baltic, so I don't see these as useful either.
France always makes a point of maibtaining strategic independence. They maintain a non-Nato nuclear triad, build nuclear subs and carriers, build their oen 4.5th gen fighters. Soaintaining a domestic micro launch capability makes sense, not everything governments do is about cost saving and financial efficiency.
>> just put collectors into southern Europe and put a DC long distance power transport line.
That is technically non trivial, and NIMBY across central Europe, looking at you Germany, is making close to impossible. We already fail getting wind from Holstein to Bavaria because people refuse to have power lines above ground close by. Or wind turbines, although that is changing.
Europe =|= France, there is no united Europe when it comes to defense.
And yes, those powerlines have to be underground because above ground is not feasible for political and public opinion reasons. And they are orders of magnitude more expensive. Connecting power grids is no trivial task, the powerlines are actually among easier things.
European space is fully integrated. France doesn't have its own launcher. Arianespace operates Vega C and Ariane 5. These rockets launches from french soil. And also, micro launchers have very little military value.
> And they are orders of magnitude more expensive.
Not compared to space based solar.
> Connecting power grids is no trivial task
Europes power system is already very highly integrated.
I would be curious to know why no one has ever tried to put large solar power plants in the Sahara desert. Covering large parts of uninhabited land with photovoltaic arrays and transporting the electricity to Europe via power lines and submarine cables seems to me easier than launch massive solar arrays into space and beam down the power. I know that many countries in that area are politically unstable, but I guess it is possible to find at least one of them whose government is able to guarantee the security of the power plants upon payment of royalties.
This is basically happening and is definately easier than space based solar. Morocco doesn't have much fossil fuels, so they're wanting to roll out renewables. They also connect to the European grid already and Spain connects to France so I'd guess in Winter there will be some movement of power in a northerly direction.
Currently I think the power mostly flows in Morocco's direction.
There's at least one british team looking to directly link the Moroccon power to the UK via sea-cables, skipping Spain/France.
Many square km of super-lightweight aluminized mylar mirrors reflecting light to ground-based solar farms could work. In principle.
Nothing else would.
Keeping them pointed the right way would be hard. Maybe they would point at a much smaller secondary mirror responsible for sweeping the beam as Earth turns under it.
This really is a bad idea all around. Europe would better build solar farms in the tropics driving ammonia synthesizers, and ship that north to use in existing NG burners.
Nah. It will spend money on very very expensive feasibility studies, carried out either by some obscure government tender hungry firms, or some large know fuck all consultancy and then nothing will happen. “Europe”, simply isnt capable of large scale projects.
Was founded in 1954, back when europe was something. These days they can only organise in sanctioning other eu member states and crushing each other’s economies.
I think the gp may have been referring to the LHC, a scientific mega-project completed in 2010, ie not long ago. ITER is still progressing. These projects are “optional” and history suggests that Europe can do fantastical and terrible things when sufficiently motivated. We’ll see how truly motivated Europe is!
ITER is mostly a colossal waste of money. Its just amazing how we spend that absurd amount of money on some fusion project when Europe hasn't even manage to make GenIV fission happen.
And in pure fusion research terms, having 100 smaller research project over that time period would have yielded far more results.
The technology relevant for fusion is evolving fast and ITER is already 2 technology generations behind.
But I agree with you, Europe has the capacity to invest if they get ideas in their head. But this space based solar I do not think has that broad a support base.
