11 ms·

Europe Is Getting Serious About Making Space-Based Solar Power a Reality

11 points by cheinyeanlim 4y ago

yrgulation 4y ago
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.
- montalbano 4y ago
  > “Europe”, simply isnt capable of large scale projects. CERN is the first counter-example that comes to mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN
  - yrgulation 4y ago
    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.
    - nyokodo 4y ago
      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!
      - panick21_ 4y ago
        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.
- Proven 4y ago
ByersReason 4y ago
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.
monkaiju 4y ago
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
- mrDmrTmrJ 4y ago
  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.
  - landemva 4y ago
    France still controls the currency of several African countries, and extracts segniorage.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    All those cost way more than renewables. SBSP and fusion won't happen at all. The others will be mothballed as renewables undercut them.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  >God forbid it might have to work with other countries for some of it's energy. They tried that with Russia and look where it got them. Working with dictatorships for your critical energy needs is always a bad idea.
credit_guy 4y ago
A satellite that can beam gigawatts of power from space is indistinguishable from a weapon.
_8j50 4y ago
ELI5: Why not lenses and mirrors to focus light to earth? Is it energy inefficient to boil water with focuses light (or laser) from space?
- ncmncm 4y ago
  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.
  - _8j50 4y ago
    I just needed to know why, thank you.
panick21_ 4y ago
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.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  They don't need rocket technology to launch this; they can just buy that from the US (namely SpaceX). Why is it a bad idea? The amount of sunlight striking Europe (esp. northern Europe) in the winter is basically useless for solar power generation.
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    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.
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      >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.
N19PEDL2 4y ago
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.
- prennert 4y ago
  There was DESERTEC. It pivoted due to multiple issues. For a writeup, see for instance: https://medium.com/the-future-world/power-for-europe-from-african-deserts-what-happened-to-desertec-8cc5aff359c6 https://medium.com/the-future-world/power-for-europe-from-af...
  - N19PEDL2 4y ago
    Thanks! I didn't know this, it's very interesting.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  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. https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project/ https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project/ At the other end of the Mediterreanean I think Cyprus and Isreal are linking up power giving another European grid entry point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EuroAsia_Interconnector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EuroAsia_Interconnector

11 points by cheinyeanlim 4y ago

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.

montalbano 4y ago
> “Europe”, simply isnt capable of large scale projects. CERN is the first counter-example that comes to mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN
- yrgulation 4y ago
  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.
  - nyokodo 4y ago
    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!
    - panick21_ 4y ago
      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.
Proven 4y ago

ByersReason 4y ago

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.

monkaiju 4y ago

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

mrDmrTmrJ 4y ago
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.
- landemva 4y ago
  France still controls the currency of several African countries, and extracts segniorage.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  All those cost way more than renewables. SBSP and fusion won't happen at all. The others will be mothballed as renewables undercut them.
midoridensha 4y ago
>God forbid it might have to work with other countries for some of it's energy. They tried that with Russia and look where it got them. Working with dictatorships for your critical energy needs is always a bad idea.

credit_guy 4y ago

A satellite that can beam gigawatts of power from space is indistinguishable from a weapon.

_8j50 4y ago

ELI5: Why not lenses and mirrors to focus light to earth? Is it energy inefficient to boil water with focuses light (or laser) from space?

ncmncm 4y ago
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.
- _8j50 4y ago
  I just needed to know why, thank you.

panick21_ 4y ago

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.

midoridensha 4y ago
They don't need rocket technology to launch this; they can just buy that from the US (namely SpaceX). Why is it a bad idea? The amount of sunlight striking Europe (esp. northern Europe) in the winter is basically useless for solar power generation.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  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.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    >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.

N19PEDL2 4y ago

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.

prennert 4y ago
There was DESERTEC. It pivoted due to multiple issues. For a writeup, see for instance: https://medium.com/the-future-world/power-for-europe-from-african-deserts-what-happened-to-desertec-8cc5aff359c6 https://medium.com/the-future-world/power-for-europe-from-af...
- N19PEDL2 4y ago
  Thanks! I didn't know this, it's very interesting.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
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. https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project/ https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project/ At the other end of the Mediterreanean I think Cyprus and Isreal are linking up power giving another European grid entry point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EuroAsia_Interconnector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EuroAsia_Interconnector