4 ms·
So it only requires 40% of all power produced by California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia combined [1]? For a few minutes? No problem then! Jokes a
by civilitty 3y ago
So it only requires 40% of all power produced by California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia combined [1]? For a few minutes? No problem then!
Jokes aside, I don't think there are any interconnectors on the planet that can handle that amount of power for even a split second, let alone the infrastructure to supply it for minutes at a time to a single location. The biggest grid interconnectors in the world cap out at a few gigawatts.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Interconnection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Interconnection
- cma 3y agoWouldn't it likely need to charge up capacitors over time anyway?
- sp332 3y agoYou would probably charge some on-site capacitors using a slower interconnect. That way you would only need a small distance to handle the discharge from the capacitors to the lasers.
- teruakohatu 3y agoThe papers call for 10^8 individual lasers. So power connectors only need to handle a small fraction of the total power.
- petrocrat 3y agoIf it's meant to transfer momentum to a lightsail, then there is no requirement that the power must be delivered to a single point on the electrical grid. Several of these lasers in a smaller form factor dispersed over a rather large geographic region can all focus on a point in orbit and transfer nearly the same momentum as a single laser focused on that point would.