A Caltech solar power project has a payload on the latest Falcon 9 launch:
Solar power has become the lowest-cost way to generate electricity on Earth. But building it on Earth places some significant limits on how much power it can generate, with the darkness and clouds that often get in the way. So there have always been a few people who liked the idea of putting solar panels where they could produce electricity around the clock: space.
While that would get you near-24/7 power production, it comes with a collection of very obvious drawbacks: high launch costs, inability to service the hardware, and the challenge of getting the power back down to where it's needed. How these trade-offs play out in the energy marketplace has been difficult to determine, partly because the energy market is changing so rapidly, and partly because we don't really know what the space-based solar hardware would look like.
Thanks to some funding from a private donor, however, California Institute of Technology researchers have quietly been working on developing the technology needed to get space-based solar to work. And they're apparently ready to subject some test hardware to the rigors of space, thanks to this morning's successful Falcon 9 launch.
[...] The hardware includes MAPLE (Microwave Array for Power-transfer Low-orbit Experiment), which is a set of lightweight, flexible microwave transmitters that are capable of the precise timing needed to make a large collection of transmitters all transmit to a single receiver. MAPLE has two different receivers on board so that the ability to direct transmission can be tested.
DOLCE is the Deployable on-Orbit ultraLight Composite Experiment, and it will extend once in orbit to cover a surface area of roughly four square meters. It's meant to test the framework used to extend and support the solar array in space.
[...] It's not hard to see why this was done by a university team rather than a private company. Space is expensive, and we're not even sure which technologies would work for producing and transmitting power from orbit. This would be a very high-risk pursuit for a private company, especially given the rate at which the cost of Earth-based renewable power has been dropping. Based on where we are with testing, it's likely to be a considerable amount of time before we can deploy an operational space-based solar plant.
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More than 80 years ago, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov wrote Reason, a story about a solar energy collection station in deep space that delivered high-energy rays to receivers on Earth and Mars. Called space-based solar power (SSP), Asimov's idea didn't start to approach science fact in any meaningful sense until 1968...
...when Peter Glaser, an aerospace engineer with Apollo program experience working for the Arthur D. Little consultancy in Cambridge, MA, published a paper suggesting ways to construct SSP stations with separate solar collecting and giant dish-based microwave transmitters.
However, based on the pre-carbon-fiber, heavy-metal aerospace technologies of the day, studies by Nasa and the U.S. Department of Energy determined that a single solar-receiving satellite would weigh in excess of 80,000 tons, putting launch costs per power station way beyond consideration.
On January 3 2023, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched 114 small payloads, and right now...
...in a sun-synchronous orbit about 525 kilometers overhead, there is a small experimental satellite called the Space Solar Power Demonstrator One (SSPD-1 for short). It was designed and built by a team at the California Institute of Technology, funded by donations from the California real estate developer Donald Bren[.]
"To the best of our knowledge, this would be the first demonstration of actual power transfer in space, of wireless power transfer," says Ali Hajimiri, a professor of electrical engineering at Caltech and a codirector of the program behind SSPD-1, the Space Solar Power Project.
The Caltech team is waiting for a go-ahead from the operators of a small space tug to which it is attached, providing guidance and attitude control. If all goes well, SSPD-1 will spend at least five to six months testing prototype components of possible future solar stations in space.
[...] If it works out, in 30 years maybe there could be orbiting solar power fleets, adding to the world's energy mix. In other words, as a recent report from [British engineering consultancy] Frazer-Nash concluded, this is "a potential game changer."
SSPD-1 story originally spotted on The Eponymous Pickle.
Previously: Space-Based Solar Power Hardware Ready for Actual Testing in Space
(Score: 2, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Friday January 06, @12:24AM (4 children)
Capturing and sending to the Earth solar energy that otherwise would have passed by contributes directly to Global Warming. Of course, a few megawatts worth of such solar energy would be insignificant, but if it ever becomes possible to do that on a large scale, for instance if we managed to create a space elevator, we couldn't use it without overheating the Earth.
Mars on the other hand, yes. Such a system, at scale, could provide abundant energy while warming that cold planet up to a comfortable temperature.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Friday January 06, @01:58AM (1 child)
Switching the entire Earth to space based solar power would be insignificant too.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Friday January 06, @02:05AM
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Friday January 06, @04:51AM (1 child)
There's a great meme photo of people putting fans on a beach to try and blow away a hurricane. Switching *all* of our power generation to space based solar power would have a similar impact.
The reason why is non-intuitive. To make electricity today we burn coal or natural gas. This releases heat energy that was sequestered eons ago. That heat energy might be released in a complicated way, e.g. as waste heat rejected from a CPU, captured by an HVAC system, transported outside, and released into the atmosphere, but it's still heat that was captured and is now free. For nuclear it's the same thing. The explosion of a star far far away made Uranium that stored a bunch of energy, and we use [a technology akin to magic] to convert that stored energy into waste heat released into the atmosphere.
Changing the source of the waste heat from burning dead dinosaurs to giant space mirrors doesn't (by our current understanding) materially change the end result. We might be wrong. There might be some issues with localized heating of the atmosphere that do have an impact. We'll have to wait and see what the experiments tell us.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 06, @06:19AM
"There might be some issues with localized heating of the atmosphere that do have an impact."
https://www.sciencealert.com/this-solar-plant-accidentally-incinerates-up-to-6-000-birds-a-year [sciencealert.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 06, @12:49AM (2 children)
"Solar power has become the lowest-cost way to generate electricity on Earth."
huh?
Any bets on deployment of this at scale vs fusion generation?
(Score: 2) by MIRV888 on Friday January 06, @04:52AM
Fusion is the clear winner if we can pull off a stable scalable reaction. Plus containing the reaction within a magnetic field is totally Star Trek.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 06, @08:05AM
If you're talking about something else maybe you escaped the MiB flashy thingy or something?
[1] If you're talking about the recent fancy metal pellet stuff, that would be very far from viable even if it hit it's dream power output. Imagine how much it would take to generate 50MW - the factory recycling and producing all the special metal pellets, the number of banks of lasers, the number of robotic stuff etc to precisely load and position the pellets.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 06, @02:13AM (4 children)
Space has gotten cheaper, but you're no longer in lowest-cost range when you move to space. Maybe in a bunch of decades, if they can feed the industry from lunar materials shipped by fully automated factories.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 06, @02:50AM (3 children)
The statement is only about solar panels on Earth.
This is a university experiment. Unlikely to be relevant to power generation for decades. I like the idea of heating Mars with it though.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 06, @03:39PM (2 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09, @02:56AM (1 child)
Well, the context is right there smacking you in the face. "Solar power is cheap on Earth BUT"
I am sensing a GREAT AUTISM in your vicinity. BUT it's not that great.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 18, @04:17AM
BUT we're doing it in space rending the above observation completely worthless. Ok...
It must be mental illness that I trigger on stupidity.