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Good. Time to build solar power gathering satellites and a laser to deliver the power to the surface.
by xvilka 6y ago
Good. Time to build solar power gathering satellites and a laser to deliver the power to the surface.
- ben_w 6y agoGoing to space is still so expensive that it makes more sense to build a global HVDC power grid even though antopodal 800 kV connections of current designs would have 60% losses over that distance. (And that’s assuming you get less than 60% losses going from electricity to light, through the atmosphere, back to electricity; and the ground station is free or negligible cost; and nobody worries about orbital death rays either malicious or accidental).
- pjc50 6y agoWhy? This is worse on every possible level; cost, energy efficiency, safety. Just put panels on your roof.
- rrmm 6y agoHey, what if we just covered the roads with solar panels?! There are lots of roads! Or maybe we put solar panels on the bottom of the ocean, no one is using that space! /s
- ben_w 6y agoRoads may well be a good thing to cover, depending on the costs of the structure. And I don’t mean “solar roadways” — a roof keeping the rain and the snow off isn’t worthless, and the extra lighting cost is small compared to the solar energy because neither streetlights nor car headlights are as bright as sunlight. And (/s notwithstanding) people have considered floating PV on reservoirs to avoid evaporative losses.
- rrmm 6y agoYeah the whole comment was /s just because the grand parent was a worst-of-all-ways thing. Floating PV is pretty interesting, has anyone done it on a large enough scale for the economics/efficiency of it to be evaluated?
- ben_w 6y agoI think pjc50 was saying “worse” not “worst”. I don’t know enough about economics or statistics to answer your question, but here is a story about a pilot project: https://www.adb.org/news/features/inside-southeast-asias-first-large-scale-floating-solar-project https://www.adb.org/news/features/inside-southeast-asias-fir...
- GordonS 6y agoWhat kind of power could such a satellite realistically gather, and how much would be left by the time if reached Earth? Curious to know how this would be beneficial over a land-based solar array.
- ben_w 6y agoDepends what you mean by “realistic”. Realistic by cost? Right now, tens kilowatts to low megawatts, and similar losses to sunlight at whatever wavelength. Realistic in the sense of “if the $2 trillion per year currently spent on energy was spent on bootstrapping known tech but in space”, rather a lot more.
- femto 6y agoOr (more likely?) a network of HVDC cables encircling the Earth, much as the world is currently enmeshed with optical fibre. The sun never sets on the solar network. It's actually a real thing with the gradual roll out of HVDC between countries. Eventually the gaps will be filled. https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/lets-build-a-global-power-grid https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/lets-build...
- im3w1l 6y agoOil and gas pipelines have lead to many geopolitical conflicts. Wouldn't these cables have the same issue? Maybe more redundancy in the network makes it less of an issue?
- justinclift 6y agoHaving some nation, or satellite hacker(s), be able to do Bad Things to targets on the surface doesn't sound appealing. :(
- progfix 6y agoI'd rather see high sea, autonomous swimming wind and solar power plants that store the power as hydrogen which gets shipped to land.
- Tade0 6y agoI think the risk of laser-induced mortality would be too high.