Japan will try to beam solar power from space by 2025

https://www.engadget.com/japan-will-try-to-beam-solar-power-from-space-by-2025-214338244.html

by signa11 • 3 years ago

66 94 3 years ago

engadget.com

quaintdev• 3 years ago

I wonder what happens to the air craft or living things when they get caught in this high energy beam

dvh• 3 years ago

They will have predominantly female offsprings

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40965912

aww_dang• 3 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aero_Spacelines_Pregnant_Guppy

bryanlarsen7• 3 years ago

These beams contain 1/4 of peak solar energy at more benign wavelengths. Long term exposure is probably safe but might not be. Any amount of time measured in any unit less than years will be safe.

https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Engineering_Techn...

heywhatupboys• 3 years ago

That's what they said about leaded gasoline and asbestus.

We do not know, it might cause cancer.

harimau7773• 3 years ago

The beams could be quite narrow. We did the calculations in a course I took and from what I recall, all of America's power could be compressed to a 15 meter beam. So they could probably just setup a no fly zone around the beam. Birds might still be a problem, but don't the alternatives (e.g. wind power) already kill birds?

runsWphotons2• 3 years ago

Lets say Im not very interested in practicality but just the theory of this. How does it work? How can I send power from one side of my room to the other if I don't care about paying more.

runsWphotons2• 3 years ago

Are there any research papers on the details?

JoeAltmaier6• 3 years ago

Old ones, with obsolete costs. Everything has been getting cheaper geometrically.

h2odragon• 3 years ago

https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/08/20/space-based-so...

Yizahi• 3 years ago

And he also wrote a somewhat related article about space based manufacturing/mining. Basically however you calculate and whatever imaginary tech you use, it is still cheaper to do practically anything on the Earth surface than anywhere else.

endisneigh• 3 years ago

Doesn’t seem worth the effort from the article description. Better off trying to figure out storage.

JoeAltmaier6• 3 years ago

False Dichotomy

culopatin• 3 years ago

Aren’t we trying to manage the energy we already get, and maybe even get less energy? Isn’t it that at the current rates with our modified atmosphere we are going to cook ourselves ?

bryanlarsen7• 3 years ago

Space based solar is in very low earth orbit. IOW, it shades the Earth, decreasing the amount of energy that reaches Earth.

csomar3• 3 years ago

Does it? Because they are beaming that energy back to earth, just to a very specific place.

qmarchi• 3 years ago

The big problem is the peaky-ness of the current renewables.

They're either very weather dependent, ecologically intensive or time dependent.

This solves a lot of this by moving the actual capture above us, into geostationary orbit where there's still plenty of space and by using microwaves (rather than traditional light) you can avoid clouds.

jvanderbot4• 3 years ago

I would say it replaces one problem with 1000 harder ones. Space based solar power just doesn't make a ton of sense, either from a capacity or cost per watt-hour sense.

jfengel• 3 years ago

They already possess fossil fuel plants that can be turned on for those rare occasions where nothing else is working. If they run only 1% of the time it is the least important problem. Even if they run 10% of the time it's still a massive decrease in CO2, without requiring putting things in orbit.

steveBK123• 3 years ago

Someone played too much SimCity 2000

SenHeng2• 3 years ago

Maybe they’re just a huge fan of Gundam OO?

fendy3002• 3 years ago

This is Japan, that is their idea.

But yes, this reminds me of orbital elevator on gundam 00

ta12432• 3 years ago

From memory they were $28k, plus renewal every 50 years. Just don't put them downtown

35mm• 3 years ago

I’m no rocket scientist but surely it’s cheaper to build more panels and batteries on Earth?

Launching stuff into orbit is expensive in cash and emissions.

notpushkin• 3 years ago

Perhaps Japan's area plays some role here.

bryanlarsen7• 3 years ago

The only use case for this that comes anywhere close to being viable is if the alternative is flying in fossil fuels to run a generator. IOW, polar regions and forward military bases.

The hope is that space based manufacturing will eventually make this technology viable more widely.

bluescrn• 3 years ago

But then you don’t get a space-based energy weapon as an added bonus

mrktf• 3 years ago

Maybe doing compromise - build space mirror and beam light to earth 24 hours per day, as bonus panels maintenance it on earth and can be easily upgraded.

Something like this was tried by Russia: Znamya ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Znamya_(satellite) )

csomar3• 3 years ago

I'm guessing it's because Japan doesn't have the Sahara Desert.

dragontamer6• 3 years ago

Sahara Desert is terrible for solar panels, and is why so many researchers are experimenting with molten salt and superheated steam.

Solar panels lose efficiency when hot. The best locations are sunny but cool, like Germany. Not deserts

SenHeng2• 3 years ago

Not many places to build solar panels in Japan.

They tried building on mountain faces but shoddy construction by yakuza linked companies lead to landslides[0] and many dead people a couple of years ago.

For the record, I live in a remote mountainous (snowy) region and have panels generating 10kw on my roof. It generates really well 8 months out of the year. 2 months of snow and another couple of months for the rainy season and I’m still generating more than I use in a year. If the govt is willing to reintroduce subsidies and raise the fees in tariffs, a lot more people would be willing to install them.

0: https://m.energytrend.com/news/20210810-22918.html

datameta2• 3 years ago

What about off-shore solar farms? These couldn't trigger the same NIMBY response (which I'm not sure the Japanese good-for-society mindset would have). Some problems would be sea spray corrosion, but that could be obviated by building them high enough. If that is a problem for visual environment preservation, they could be just over the horizon, and all linked to one main power transmission cable.

dragontamer6• 3 years ago

I’m still generating more than I use in a year

But you really depend on the grid for energy storage it seems. There is no technology available to consumers that can load shift and/or store energy for 2 months.

In practice, this means you waste your excess electricity (or perhaps, sell it to the grid so that someone else can use it), but then still rely upon Natural Gas peakers for those other two months.

If the govt is willing to reintroduce subsidies and raise the fees in tariffs, a lot more people would be willing to install them.

More solar in this scenario means that everyone involved runs out of electricity in those 2 months.

A degree of the grid can be solar, but not everybody. We should get as many people on solar as is reasonable, but energy storage (especially on the scale of months) simply is science fiction.

Back in the real world, there will be 2 months+ of fossil fuels to support the lifestyle you've chosen. It's better than 12 months of fossil fuels, but we aren't at a technological level where we can ignore the natural gas plants quite yet.

But we can mitigate their use.

jvanderbot4• 3 years ago

You're not a rocket scientist but you're absolutely right.

It's cheaper to tear down the microwave receiver and put up solar panels and batteries than it is to send solar panels to space to beam power back to the microwave receiver. You'd have to beam 1000x the power that solar panels receive to justify the cost of sending things to space, but at that point you're lifting 100x more panels to space to get the 10x bonus, and lifing / installing them in space at 10,000x the cost or worse... Plus they have to be magical perfect installations that never fail and work perfectly.

Again cheaper to put that money into more batteries and panels..

JoeAltmaier6• 3 years ago

That's probably an exaggeration by this time. Lift costs are decreasing geometrically. Solar efficiency is going up constantly. Land and eminent domain groundside continue to go up.

All the variables are moving in the direction to benefit orbital solar, and will continue to go that way. It's not so much a matter of whether it's cheaper in space, than when it is cheaper in space. And it won't be long now.

cuddlyogre• 3 years ago

Limiting your future and imagination based on what is possible and practical right now is not how we advance as a civilization.

Presumably, they believe there will be advances in technology such as space based construction techniques or mining asteroids for resources that will make it a viable option.

tuatoru• 3 years ago

Physics will stay the same no matter how hard we wish.

Mining the asteroids is an activity where payback periods are measured in decades, plural. Space is big. Rockets are slow, and so are orbits.

_aavaa_2• 3 years ago

Japan's getting creative since they currently important a large amount of their energy in the form of fuels on ships.

That is not gonna last if they want to continue decarbonizing.

They are averse to nuclear, they are an island, and they don't have a great relationship with most of their neighbours from whom they could import electricity directly. So instead they have crazy things like this and hydrogen.

cykros• 3 years ago

The other thing that would be cheaper would be building molten salt cooled nuclear reactors, instead of continuing to use the water cooled once that are so prone to hydrogen explosions. I'm not a nuclear engineer, but I suspect you may even be able to re-use a lot of existing infrastructure in the process.

Could even be safer if their system for beaming electricity has the potential to be compressed to a point where it turns it into a lightning gun.

vitro• 3 years ago

Curious question, why not use this approach for example with wind farms or solar farms? You'd avoid the need to build high capacity cables which are sometimes a reason why renewables do not spread that much. I can imagine that coming into contact with this beam is not something anyone would wish for.

You could beam energy up to a station in the orbit which would then redirect it to the place where energy is needed. You could then get "easily" energy from solar farms in Sahara, for example.

boringg• 3 years ago

What you are describing is increasingly more cost prohibitive and another level of conplexity then the problem statement

datameta2• 3 years ago

What would that satellite look like to enable meaningful power transmission? A bank of capacitors and batteries? Would have multiple smaller sats scale better and/or increase coverage?

runeks• 3 years ago

However, even if Japan successfully deploys a set of orbital solar arrays, the tech would still be closer to science fiction than fact. That’s because producing an array that can generate 1 gigawatt of power – or about the output of one nuclear reactor – would cost about $7 billion with currently available technologies.

foepys• 3 years ago

7 billion USD for 1 GW? No so far off of some modern nuclear power plants.

Hinkley Point C is currently estimated at £32.7 billion for 3.26 GW.

ta12432• 3 years ago

Meanwhile Hinkley C, a 3.2GW plant, currently costs about $30b

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-61519609

So with currently available technology price is the same as nuclear even assuming that $7b overruns

JoeAltmaier6• 3 years ago

Lots of doubt. But don't doubt this: anybody who bets against orbital solar will lose, and it won't take long. The costs are all going in the direction to make space-based solar the winning option.

blueflow2• 3 years ago

The costs are all going in the direction to make space-based solar the winning option

Citation needed. I'd especially like to see the calculation against the launch costs and the expected lifetimes of solar cells.

JoeAltmaier6• 3 years ago

Really? We need to cite the worldwide phenomenon of drastically reducing lift costs? Astronomical growth in cheap thin solar panels? Rising real estate prices?

No. No I'm not going to dignify this with a 'citation'.

rep_movsd2• 3 years ago

We lived on only solar power for 7 years. For the last 2 years if I hadn't had my precious Honda GK200 petrol/kerosene generator, it would have made it quite impossible to use a desktop computer effectively. My whole successful career of 20 years as a software dev might have got upset,

Betting on solar is a silly idea. Its just a way for oil companies to keep shipping baseload

siddiqi123• 3 years ago

Question....if satellite TV that already beams microwaves to earth has issues during cloud cover...how will this be any better? Sure the power may blast through but the efficiency of that will drop depending on the weather.

Well, I guess progress is progress. If you don't try, you won't know. You keep going until you get it.

However here is an idea, what about using this for, i don't know, powering habitats etc on the Moon?

542458• 3 years ago

"Microwave" is a big range, from 1 to 1000 GHz. Satellite TV is in the ~10-20 GHz range, but I believe there are frequencies where clouds and rain are more transparent.

Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_transmission#/media/...

So I guess the goal would be to pick one of the high points on that graph that also wouldn't wreck havoc with telecommunications.

thek3nger• 3 years ago

Here it is a nice video explaining pros and cons of orbital solar panels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZPrIE5ZMZA

affgrff2• 3 years ago

Is the other way also possible? Moving heat into space and then profit on the generated heat gradient on earth?

Hello71• 3 years ago

no, because that violates the second law of thermodynamics: it always costs energy to move energy.

traverseda• 3 years ago

Radiative cooling is a thing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_daytime_radiative_cool...

harimau7773• 3 years ago

We discussed this in one of my EE courses. From what I recall, all of the United State's power could be compressed down to a beam something like 15 meters in diameter. However, the problem is that if you compress it more than that the air will ionize. Effectively, an orbital solar beam could also be used as a lightning gun which is something the international community might have an issue with.

dbetteridge• 3 years ago

They say life imitates art...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanquish_(video_game)

wefarrell• 3 years ago

Could this be used to beam power to electric planes or cargo ships? I would think that it could be useful for vehicles that require more range than batteries currently allow.

xyzabc098123• 3 years ago

Imagine satellite aiming is off and we have death ray zapping people.

rep_movsd2• 3 years ago

Sure, ignore a technology that is already working since 1970 (fission) and try some scatterbrained sci-fi idea

water-data-dude• 3 years ago

Asimov used this idea in a bunch of his stories. It’d be cool to see it make the transition from sci-fi to real life! :)

tommiegannert2• 3 years ago

Is it a good idea to put more solar irradiation onto Earth than we already have? I thought climate change was due to us causing accumulation of solar that would otherwise diffuse into space.

Assuming they're not shading Earth, robbing someone else of sun. Are they? Is Mr Burns' solar blackout machine becoming a thing?

rich_sasha2• 3 years ago

I guess depends what wavelengths are used. If it is something not absorbed by the atmosphere then the argument is moot. I think some microwave lengths for the bill.

tommiegannert2• 3 years ago

Why does it have to be absorbed by the atmosphere to be a problem?

If the energy reaches the surface, and is absorbed there, it will eventually become heat as we use it. At that point, we've added heat to a system we're actively trying to cool.

woleium• 3 years ago

Surely the real reason for this project is that it's a weapon?

Japan will try to beam solar power from space by 2025

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