18 thoughts on “Space-Based Solar Power”

  1. Not much in the way of natural energy resources. So they had to try something else. At one point it was nuclear but now they have too many political issues with it.

    In the long run I think Japan needs to stop being obsessed with dismantling their nuclear energy sector or the result will be further economic stagnation or worse.

  2. “Next, JAXA researchers hope to conduct the first microwave power transmission experiment in space, sending several kilowatts from low Earth orbit to the ground. This step, proposed for 2018, should test out the hardware: ”

    This year Japan is on track to install 10 GW of terrestrial solar.

  3. Oh, FFS! There is a VERY VERY BIG problem with ground solar. And it’s a simple one, with no practical solution at present. Taken as a yearly average, ground solar produces any energy at all only 50% of the time – and produces decent amounts maybe half that. (Cloudy, near dawn or dusk… all of these reduce the output.) And we don’t currently have any way of storing electricity in bulk at reasonable cost.

    Japan might actually be in a decent position for that, being quite mountainous and wet so pumped hydro storage is a bit more practical than for some countries; except that the entire flipping country is an earthquake zone, so there is a potential for disaster always present and higher costs for earthquake hardening.

    Another problem with ground solar is the gross mismatch between supply and demand. More energy is needed at night, which is just when solar is off line.

    1. “Another problem with ground solar is the gross mismatch between supply and demand. More energy is needed at night, which is just when solar is off line.”

      Energy is needed at night, but, “More Energy” is needed at night seems kind of overstated.
      9-5 we do a lot of office work, computers running full out, office buildings at full A/C or heat,
      elevators running.

      Demand starts falling off as the workers go home and by midnight demand is at an ebb. It’s why off peak power is so cheap.

      http://www.world-nuclear.org/uploadedImages/org/info/summer_winter_Original(1).png

      Solar happens to nicely match the demand curves, it’s quite fascinating to see the economic impact
      of the merit-order effect and how the revenues are moving, but, Solar is nicely destroying the market for Peak power, it’s why Simberg goes apopleptic when it’s mentioned. Hippie tech is making lots of money.

        1. It is amusing to watch you praise Elon Musk as the worldest greatest,
          disruptive, genius, billionaire for SpaceX but then try and
          avoid commenting on Tesla or Solar City.

          Tesla has a market cap of 27 billion and SolarCity has a market cap of $6 Billion.

          I’ve never heard Elon Musk ever talk positively about SBSP, in fact he hates it

          “http://www.popularmechanics.com/how-to/blog/elon-musk-on-spacex-tesla-and-why-space-solar-power-must-die-13386162”

          “One thing we learned today: While Musk loves electric cars and spaceflight, there’s one thing he hates: space solar power. “You’d have to convert photon to electron to photon back to electron. What’s the conversion rate?” he says, getting riled up for the first time during his talk. “Stab that bloody thing in the heart!”

          He doesn’t react well to bad ideas.”

          or

          “Despite his leading Solar City and running a rocket company, Musk is dismissive the idea of space based solar power. “If anybody should be interested in it, it should be me,” Musk said. “But it totally doesn’t work.” The sun’s intensity in orbit is only about double that on a good spot on Earth, and you’d need to orbit equipment to convert photons to electrons and beam it down via microwave radiation, and then convert back to electrons on the ground. “Even if launch costs were free and you could teleport the equipment to Earth orbit–which would be awesome–it still doesn’t work. So we shouldn’t be thinking about it.””

          I suppose you can call Elon an idiot, or academic fraud,

          2. Aside from Name Calling, can you actually come up with a rational
            argument for SBSP?

            You just said “Elon is not so smart” on SBSP, so lets see your argument?

          4. Smart people can explain complicated things.

            Really smart people can explain complicated things in simple ways.

            I guess you aren’t able to do either of the above.

      2. You’re right that terrestrial solar has its uses for peak-leveling during daylight hours, especially for air conditioning. But terrestrial solar is entirely unsuited as a replacement for baseload capacity due to the lack of any practical, site-independent means of storing energy for use at night or when inclement weather compromises daytime supply. We’ve had this particular conversation before. Your passion for terrestrial solar is not sufficient to magically render it more than a sideshow in the global energy picture. It’s never going to play the Big Top. Fletcher is right that pumped hydro storage might be a way to usefully store terrestrial solar-based energy, but only in quite limited places with suitable topography.

        Space-based solar power has potential as a large-scale baseload technology, but only if built using in-situ space resources for most or all of the needed mass. It also has the potential to start fairly small as a solution for niche markets in inaccessible areas facing huge expenses in transporting fuel for conventional small-scale generating plants. In this way, it is potentially capable of starting small and scaling up in stages.

    2. “Japan might actually be in a decent position for that, being quite mountainous and wet so pumped hydro storage is a bit more practical than for some countries; except that the entire flipping country is an earthquake zone, so there is a potential for disaster always present and higher costs for earthquake hardening.”

      Japan had 50 nuclear reactors, 10 were critically damaged, and 4 melted down/exploded/ critically failed.

      Japan also had 1198 dams, and a total of 2 failed and 25 were damaged. Looks like Hydro dams are about 10X more robust then nuclear power plants.

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