Japan plans giant solar power station in space
- Thread starter mattheman
- Start date
We are world leaders at it apparently, there is plans to use CCS in the North sea:
"Professor Haszeldine, of the University of Edinburgh, estimates around 150 billion tons of CO2 could be stored in the UK, equivalent to 100 years worth of emissions from north-west Europe."
Read more:
http://www.nce.co.uk/news/low-carbo...t-on-north-sea-carbon-storage/5208669.article
http://www.nce.co.uk/news/energy/uk-could-be-co2-sink-for-europe/5207784.article
Caporegime
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FAR from the "only problem", but yeah that sounds like another
Yeah, 20% may be more realistic, they were better than I thought. That's exactly a poor enough efficiency to completely negate the 5 times stronger solar energy in the first place mind! Not to mention transmission losses and the losses in turning the laser energy back into electrical energy on earth (probably boiling water and driving turbines the usualy way?). It remains pie in the sky for me, no pun intended
Wouldn't it be plausible to have it not stationary but orbiting so always in the sun, storing power and unloading it as it passes collectors each day. At 20% efficiency in transfering but 5 times the harnessable power, you've got about the same amount of power you could get on the ground but you can potentially collect the power all day long which you can't do on the ground. Theres also a heck of a lot of real estate going spare in orbit, where as especially in Japan, but all over, the practicality of solar power is limited largely due to space. For instance theres the calculations people did years ago that to power the USA you'd need to cover basically the whole of Arizona, which is simply not feasable. Not sure if it is possible to have such a large panel in anything but geostationary orbit due to the path of other satelites, though a couple other well placed mirror satelites to give it some power generation through the night would be rather awesome and Bond-esque.
Solar power doesn't seem like an effective answer to global power requirements, the odd offset here and there. if every roof in the country was covered and we had a decent way to store the excess power and run household appliances off them we migth have a shot. The other problem being manufacturing, it would take decades and a MASSIVE cost to produce enough panels to cover every roof in the UK, and it still wouldn't be enough.
But this isn't ready for today or tomorrow, if it went ahead you're talking about 20 years from now, by which point investment in solar power, and technology would have advanced significantly.
Right now it would be madness for the USA to do it because they do have space for a few square miles of panels, Japan has incredibly little space to do so which is why its an option sooner.
There's just the small problem of getting it up there
Good space panels these days are say 300w - so if we can get 5 times that off them (Lets be doubly generous and say we can get 3000w off one panel - which weighs in at 35kg - and is 2m across) - still means we need to get over 3000 of them up there and connected together.
The small problem of 3000 panels being a damn heavy payload for a rocket or rockets and that wouldn't include the extra weight needed for the supports/struts and electrical equipment needed for the project.
That cost alone would probably be more than NASAs total expenditure over the last 20 years -and the maintenance (connecting them together successfully - and as has been learned from the amount of time the reasonably small array on the ISS has had to be repaired due to mechanical failures and particle damage)
And the small fact they they will only be giving out around 85% of their original power after 25 years (assuming all the cells on 3000 panels are still intact and connected - which is highly unlikely).
And as for beaming 1 Billion watts down to earth and being viable.....
Yeah I agree the numbers for this project simply don't add up. If each panel is 2m*2m and they want a square mile array (~1600*1600m) then they will need 640000 panels, assuming 1500W from each panel that is 0.96GW from the panels, 20% efficient CO2 lasers beaming to earth, now down to 0.19GW, the best steam turbine generators are nearly 50% efficient so you now have a useful 96MW of electricity (assuming no laser scattering through atmosphere and no loss in heating the water). This is the same as 16 of Germany's latest and largest wind turbines which can generate 6MW each.
And if you are correct in each panel weighing 35Kg then japan will need to launch 22400 tonnes of mass just for the panels. It costs approximately $50000 to launch a kilo of mass so it will cost them roughly $1.1 trillion US to launch the panels. Mental.
Article on steam turbine efficiency
Wind turbine link
Brilliant it's about time proper research into this was done. It' sbeen thought of so many times, partial designs tested on earth. but no ones ever even had a off chance of actually testing one.
There's already been research and some positive results in extremly thin and light space solar panels.
Previous designs and ground tests has used extremely narrow beam microwave. You might be able to stick it in very high orbit/stationery always in the sun and have several relay satellites.
But with any new technology there will be massive hurdles and the first designs will certainly not be cost effective or viable in large scale. But it is viable research and small scale tests. To improve and advance technology.
Just like fusion, or is that pie in the sky and doomed to fail?
Also if the research at some point does deem it viable. You can build a rail gun, which could launch objects into space far cheaper and much more tonnage.
There's already been research and some positive results in extremly thin and light space solar panels.
FAR from the "only problem", but yeah that sounds like another
Yeah, 20% may be more realistic, they were better than I thought. That's exactly a poor enough efficiency to completely negate the 5 times stronger solar energy in the first place mind! Not to mention transmission losses and the losses in turning the laser energy back into electrical energy on earth (probably boiling water and driving turbines the usualy way?). It remains pie in the sky for me, no pun intended
Previous designs and ground tests has used extremely narrow beam microwave. You might be able to stick it in very high orbit/stationery always in the sun and have several relay satellites.
But with any new technology there will be massive hurdles and the first designs will certainly not be cost effective or viable in large scale. But it is viable research and small scale tests. To improve and advance technology.
Just like fusion, or is that pie in the sky and doomed to fail?
Also if the research at some point does deem it viable. You can build a rail gun, which could launch objects into space far cheaper and much more tonnage.
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Covering every roof certainly seems a better option to me. As you say, not particularly viable right now, but surely more practical than launching them into space! Looking at the plus points, localised energy production means no grid losses and higher dependability (and, though hopefully not something which needs to be considered, far less open to attack).
Roof mounted wind turbines do exist too, though I can't help thinking even the magnetic levitation ones will be noisy.
I had thought that if everyone had thier localised energy source, the grid would then be used to interconnect them and help spread the loading more effectively as well as covering any individuals downtime. Furthermore, it could possibly be used to link back to large energy storage units for night time energy, the individual then paying a smaller amount to the grid for this service. I don't know on the second part, localised storage may be more viable here too, just that current methods with batteries do need special maintenance and considerations.
Will need a massive extension cable to get power back to earth
You know we'll buy one 6 inches too short
Trouble is localised energy falls flat ion it's face as soon as you get dense populations. The normal parents and 2.4kids in a semi detached house is very good. But as soon as you get apartment blocks, sky rise buildings and dense population. It's pretty much useless.
However I've said all new Houses should be fitted with solar water heaters at the minimum
You know we'll buy one 6 inches too short
Story of my life *sobs*
Ah, indeed, not such a good "roof area to energy requirement" ratio in those inner city buildings
I'm not sure then, until fusion is ready. Randomly, is cordite not renewable and non-polluting? It certainly seems to have a lot of energy for it's mass!
It's research, Fusion is not cost effective or viable at the moment. but we are researching it.
The problem is PV cells atm are crap, they loose the majority of their power after 20 years and they loose that linearly, so after 10 years they are already producing roughly half what they started on, and that is assuming you keep them pristine clean. Covering your roof costs between £6-11K, you'll be luck to get a third of that cost back in twenty years in the uk.
Large energy storage units don't exist, (except for using hydro in reverse, but their isn't enough space in the uk for enough hydro power storage). Batteries for local storage are horrifically inefficient, a typical car battery will give you about 0.5KWh, about enough for your fridge and one energy efficient lightbulb overnight.
You can't really comment on the cost effectiveness of fusion as it's still in development
I'm doing my final year project on alternative energies, focusing mainly on fusion. For the mid to long term it's the only real source for base load power generation. When petrol, diesel and gas are eventually phased out the demand for electricity will be huge compared to today.
Soldato
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FOR ****S SAKE! another of my genius ideas shamelessly stolen! and they tell me i'm not being spied on -_-
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You can't really comment on the cost effectiveness of fusion as it's still in development
Exactly the same as space solar power.
and you totally miss the point of this being a research project.
Actually it's not as it is not working and may not work. Are best and feasible today although costly (but any big change in energy will be) plan at the moment. Is to build a high capacity high efficiency cross European/Africa power grid. with each country putting in it's best natural resources. Most of Europe has massive geo thermal resources. Africa solar and UK and countries north of us wind and water.
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