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What you say is not a joke. There has been research into space based solar power which would beam this power down to earth to a collector point. Perhaps it is p
by Ajay-p 3y ago
What you say is not a joke. There has been research into space based solar power which would beam this power down to earth to a collector point. Perhaps it is possible? Could power be safely beamed from sea to port?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power
- teddyh 3y agoIn space it could well be plausible, but I feel like the losses from air resistance would be more than could be done using an electrical cable.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> Could power be safely beamed from sea to port? Beaming straight up and down incurs much less atmosphere than beaming horizontally at sea level.
- foota 3y agoNot too serious proposal, beam up, beam sideways, and then beam back down starlink style? I wonder if the losses and costs here could ever be competitive with HVDC lines.
- dullcrisp 3y agoSpace mirror?
- hinkley 3y agoPhase conjugate tracking system?
- hinkley 3y agoMuch fewer shore birds as well.
- ben_w 3y agoThe maximum power density before the air ionises is surprisingly low. Well before this point, it’s a terrifying industrial accident waiting to happen, given 1 mW is supposed to be the safety limit for eye-safe lasers while 500 mW lasers set things on fire and blind people who are only looking at diffuse reflections of the beam.
- BobaFloutist 3y agoOk, so we establish vacuum tubes to blast the lasers through, maybe with some sort of glass fiber to direct the light, and...wait a minute, that's just a different, more fragile kind of cable. Darn.
- ben_w 3y agoMm. People are trying it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-over-fiber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-over-fiber https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6732/8/8/335 https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6732/8/8/335 I have no idea if this is a good idea that just hasn't been developed very far, or if it's like powering cars with compressed air (technically possible but not valuable).
- BobaFloutist 3y agoMy completely uninformed guess is that light can be incredibly information dense, but not all that energy dense compared to electricity. Also fiber is a little more brittle and persnickety than electrical wire, so in this specific use case it would seem to be strictly worse, at least when it comes to the immediate challenge of cables experiencing physical harm.
- nradov 3y agoThey should just charge batteries at the wind turbines, then fling them to shore using trebuchets.