> Vijendran said he expects the cost of space-based solar power will eventually fall to a point where it is competitive with solar and wind power on Earth, which is below $50 per megawatt-hour
Anyone have a link to his math? Curious how launch cost and cadence relate to LCOE.
I mean, maybe after we fill up all the rooftops? It costs a couple thousand a pound to lift things into orbit. It costs basically nothing to lift things onto your roof (the installers are mostly needed for the electrical work). For $15k per home you can deploy on 80% of homes in the US. It works and is cost-effective today.
Yup, the big advantage the article cites for space based power is 24/7 availability vs the daily cycle on the ground, but that is so easily solved by batteries which are also on a rapidly declining cost curve. While I tend to like space-based ideas (just cool tech problems!), it seems that by the time this is really viable the problem will have been well-solved on the ground?
They say the energy would be like standing in the sun. I'll bet there is more to it than that, like cancer or radio interference or other unknown nonsense.
But... wonder what a solar array 1km square would receive from the sun itself?
Honestly, I'm reminded of moving across states. When I went to move, every pound of stuff had a price, like .50/lb. So I could figure out if something was worthwhile to move. If something weighed 200 lbs, it had to be worth $100 just to break even.
In the same way, how much energy would we expend to get those solar panels into orbit, and how much would the receiving array cost to build in time + real estate. Would it break even compared to expending the same amount of money on the ground?
like if launching an array into orbit + ground station was $10b dollars, how much ground-based solar could you get for $10b dollars. And with batteries? I'll bet the economics of ground-based is pretty good.
Space solar has the same problem as other base load power as not being economic unless they run all day. Ground solar and wind can cover the day and much of the night. Battery storage can cover the night.
There will be need for long-term storage for days when there is no wind and solar. But space solar would be uneconomic to leave idle. Easier to build long-term storage system, or build interconnects and more wind and solar.
What about beaming monochromatic red or near infrared light down toward existing solar installations? Silicon can have up to 50% efficiency at these wavelengths and it's much safer than microwaves, especially visible red light is.
Space based solar power was proposed decades ago when solar panels were expensive. The 1977 price was $77/W. It made sense to launch the expensive solar panels and have full utilization of them.
Now, solar panels are cheap, $1/W in bulk. Even with really cheap Starship launch price of $50/lb, getting to orbit is more than the cost of the panels. That doesn't include costs of assembling array or transmitting the power. It effectively means that the extra utilization of space power isn't worth it.
I doubt that wireless energy transmission at this scale and distance will ever be practical. It will probably never be economic compared to terrestrial panels and batteries.
If/when we build space elevators, then orbital solar might make sense to use the tether to transfer power. Even with the lower cost of putting mass in orbit, I don't think it'd be any cheaper than terrestrial solar.
Besides, by the time we figure put space elevators, we'll already have commercial fusion, right?
Will it make sense? One of the first things coming to mind is that if we harvest energy outside of Earth and send it towards Earth, the planet will eventually need to dissipate extra energy as heat back to space. Given that we're currently fighting with raising temperatures, it could be a matter of concern given enough scale.
Solar system in space enjoy potentially 24 hours per day of sun - so they can be more effective than land-based systems. Downsides of course are the necessity to build in space, to deliver payloads to space. We need good numbers to determine.
Hope we'll soon make solar panels in space - maybe on the Moon - so won't need to use Earth resources for that. But "soon" here is of course relative.
We can surely use orbital power for space-related needs - running data centers in space could be one of the interesting applications. Space manufacturing, making fuels and metals... Sending energy to Earth usually has more efficiency the longer the sent waves are - microwaves are better to catch than light - but we also have the requirements of rectennas. It's definitely interesting application area from the engineering point of view.
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[ 29.9 ms ] story [ 636 ms ] threadAnyone have a link to his math? Curious how launch cost and cadence relate to LCOE.
A space based system would cost billions.
They say the energy would be like standing in the sun. I'll bet there is more to it than that, like cancer or radio interference or other unknown nonsense.
But... wonder what a solar array 1km square would receive from the sun itself?
Honestly, I'm reminded of moving across states. When I went to move, every pound of stuff had a price, like .50/lb. So I could figure out if something was worthwhile to move. If something weighed 200 lbs, it had to be worth $100 just to break even.
In the same way, how much energy would we expend to get those solar panels into orbit, and how much would the receiving array cost to build in time + real estate. Would it break even compared to expending the same amount of money on the ground?
like if launching an array into orbit + ground station was $10b dollars, how much ground-based solar could you get for $10b dollars. And with batteries? I'll bet the economics of ground-based is pretty good.
There will be need for long-term storage for days when there is no wind and solar. But space solar would be uneconomic to leave idle. Easier to build long-term storage system, or build interconnects and more wind and solar.
Now, solar panels are cheap, $1/W in bulk. Even with really cheap Starship launch price of $50/lb, getting to orbit is more than the cost of the panels. That doesn't include costs of assembling array or transmitting the power. It effectively means that the extra utilization of space power isn't worth it.
If/when we build space elevators, then orbital solar might make sense to use the tether to transfer power. Even with the lower cost of putting mass in orbit, I don't think it'd be any cheaper than terrestrial solar.
Besides, by the time we figure put space elevators, we'll already have commercial fusion, right?
Solar system in space enjoy potentially 24 hours per day of sun - so they can be more effective than land-based systems. Downsides of course are the necessity to build in space, to deliver payloads to space. We need good numbers to determine.
Hope we'll soon make solar panels in space - maybe on the Moon - so won't need to use Earth resources for that. But "soon" here is of course relative.
We can surely use orbital power for space-related needs - running data centers in space could be one of the interesting applications. Space manufacturing, making fuels and metals... Sending energy to Earth usually has more efficiency the longer the sent waves are - microwaves are better to catch than light - but we also have the requirements of rectennas. It's definitely interesting application area from the engineering point of view.