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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

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?

powerhour 4y ago
If the authors of the article are right, being able to beam power through "inclement weather" could be a huge win on its own.
zajio1am 4y ago
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).
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  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?
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    >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 I'm pretty sure these numbers are completely false for central Europe.
    - Arnt 4y ago
      More to the point, irrelevant. 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.
      - midoridensha 4y ago
        >there are enough low-population area with much sunlight in winter Like where? And are they under the political control of Europe? If not, then they're useless.
        Arnt 4y ago
        Parts of Italy and Spain. Landscapes like this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fb/Almeria_02.jpg/1280px-Almeria_02.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fb/Al... 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.
        zajio1am 4y ago
        > Solar requires surprisingly little space 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. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A4nnersdorf_Solar_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A4nnersdorf_Solar_Park
awillen 4y ago
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."
- Ancalagon 4y ago
  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
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    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.
chrispeel 4y ago
> Is there such an advantage power wise that this is worth doing? No Here's an article from Eric Berger; see the section on drawbacks: https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/08/european-space-chief-says-continent-will-lead-in-space-based-solar-power/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/08/european-space-chief...
mrDmrTmrJ 4y ago
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.
- hef19898 4y ago
  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.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    Sodium acetate has a heat of fusion of 289kJ/kg and a price of around $400/tonne For low grade heat you can just store it directly using some black pipes at $5/kWh of storage skipping the electrolysis and the pv steps. Might need some kind of cleaning after 5 years, but it should break even especially if scale pushes prices down a bit.

powerhour 4y ago

If the authors of the article are right, being able to beam power through "inclement weather" could be a huge win on its own.

zajio1am 4y ago

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).

Schroedingersat 4y ago
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?
- midoridensha 4y ago
  >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 I'm pretty sure these numbers are completely false for central Europe.
  - Arnt 4y ago
    More to the point, irrelevant. 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.
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      >there are enough low-population area with much sunlight in winter Like where? And are they under the political control of Europe? If not, then they're useless.
      - Arnt 4y ago
        Parts of Italy and Spain. Landscapes like this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fb/Almeria_02.jpg/1280px-Almeria_02.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fb/Al... 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.
        zajio1am 4y ago
        > Solar requires surprisingly little space 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. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A4nnersdorf_Solar_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A4nnersdorf_Solar_Park

awillen 4y ago

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."

Ancalagon 4y ago
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
- panick21_ 4y ago
  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.

chrispeel 4y ago

> Is there such an advantage power wise that this is worth doing? No Here's an article from Eric Berger; see the section on drawbacks: https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/08/european-space-chief-says-continent-will-lead-in-space-based-solar-power/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/08/european-space-chief...

mrDmrTmrJ 4y ago

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.

hef19898 4y ago
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.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Sodium acetate has a heat of fusion of 289kJ/kg and a price of around $400/tonne For low grade heat you can just store it directly using some black pipes at $5/kWh of storage skipping the electrolysis and the pv steps. Might need some kind of cleaning after 5 years, but it should break even especially if scale pushes prices down a bit.