Going Solar in Space
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles on 07. 6.07
India is hard at work building a series of solar power generation stations that it plans on sending into space to quench the country's ever increasing thirst for energy. “India’s hypersonic air and space transport activity are now sharp focussed on energy production through space solar power by having solar power stations in orbit. The era of expendable launch vehicles should end and reusable launch vehicles (RLV) are needed,” said V.K. Saraswatch, the Defense Research and Development Organization's chief controller.
A two-day conference to discuss the best strategies to meet this ambitious objective was held a few weeks ago in which Saraswatch argued that RLVs should be used in concert with a hypersonic technology demonstrator vehicle (HTDV), a fast transport vehicle, to put the stations in orbit. Dr. Gopalaswamy, the former chairman of Bharat Dynamic Ltd. (part of India's ministry of defense), and Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the country's president, were on hand to lend support to the proposed plans.
“The era of conventional fuels is ending. The sun’s intensity in space is nearly twice what we feel here on the Earth’s surface. On Earth, there is sunlight fit for power generation for six to eight hours a day. In space, it’s 24 hours. We need to have our own solar power station in orbit. Even if one per cent of our nation’s land area is utilised for solar energy, we could have nearly 1,000 giga watts of electric power. Consider this as the projected demand in 2030 is 400 GW and the current consumption is 120 GW," said Gopalaswamy, adding that he envisaged possible collaborations with Brazil and South Africa.
Although the technology isn't quite there yet, finding a way to directly absorb solar energy from space is a no-brainer. As Gopalaswamy mentioned, the sun's intensity there is almost twice what we get on Earth and, best of all, the energy could be continually harnessed 24 hours a day. If implemented on a wide scale, such a plan would go a long ways towards solving our oil crisis and providing us with a safe, sustainable source of alternative energy.
Yet building and sending several large power stations into space is easier said than done: there are countless opportunities for errors to be made, the slightest of which could ruin the mission. We'll be keeping a close eye on India's progress as we approach their demonstration period next year.
Via ::The Statesman: Solar energy in space to power India (newspaper)
See also: ::40% Efficient Solar Cells: They Are Being Used Back On Earth, ::Solar Pyramids Being Built in India, ::American Solar Energy Society's "Tackling Climate Change in the U.S" Report
Sounds nice, but how does the energy get stored in space or sent back to earth for us little earthlings to consume? Sim-city style "mircowave beam"? :)
I'm not buying this. It'll be really cool if they can manage to do this, but I don't see any mention of how they'd get the power back down to earth. I think that's a much bigger technical hurdle than developing an RLV. I'd say use the existing technologies to get the power source settled, then move onto optimizing the rest of the package. It'll be interesting to hear more....
I don't see how this helps India. They cannot get the power back down to the earth. India has much more immediate problems. A better idea would be for them to focus on getting their farmers to convert the massive amount of wasted materials they produce while farming into biodiesel. That would allow them to produce their own electricity and it would create jobs.
roger
Going to all that trouble "just" to get double the power seems like it's not the greatest idea. Yes, double sounds nice...but then having an armada of rockets / shuttles / whatever to get, what, hundreds of acres upon acres upon acres of panels up there seems like a huge feat. The Space Station is barely hanging on, yet they think they can pull all this for just double the power of dropping the panels on the ground and saying "There, done". Magnifies the complexity of the proposition by heaps, for only double the power. The panels would end up being the tiniest bit of the cost! Just put up twice as many panels. Worry about improving efficiency with (literally) exorbitantly expensive methods when your cities and fields are dripping with solar panels...and not a moment sooner.
I agree.. the first thing I scanned the article for was concerning how they proposed to get the power from satellite to the ground.
There is no mention of this.. rather critical element in this article.
Microwave beam is the only method, so they probably figured there was no reason to mention it.
You read yet you forget immediately after: not only do the panels receive twice the amount of sunlight per square meter than on earth, but they also receive that sunlight 24HOURS PER DAY. If you figure that on earth, a generous yearly average is 6 hours per day (that factors in cloudy days), that means you're getting 8 TIMES MORE POWER.
Note to Indian PR people: US Treehuggers need a "more detailed" explanation as they are not necessarily "fully informed" on these types of technologies.
Well, I think the real catch going in space is not double power, but 24/7 power. Also efficiency of power transfer might will be so low that double power is bye bye anyway. Power has to be transferred anyway through atmosphere which is the reason that there is less sunlight at earth surface than in space
One option for power transfer might be microwave beaming. At least it is possible to transfer energy by microwaves. Microwave generation is feasible (microwave ovens can do that) and power can be received using antenna and RF rectifier to generate DC power out of microwave beam. Realising all that in space at large scale with decent efficiency and especially with high enough reliability for convenient life time of power plant is huge task. It'll really be interesting to hear what they will come up to in future...
It's the possible projects like this that made, for me at least, the MIT project from a few weeks ago seem interesting.
The people involved with the MIT project were dealing with the WIRELESS transmission of power.
The efficiency of the transmission was not at 100%, but the results were promising.
If the efficiency can be increased and the energy can be SAFELY transmitted down to Earth's surface, then projects like India's would really be worthwhile.
Projects on much grander scales could also be considered, such as large solar arrays on the DARK side of the moon (so as not to disturb wildlife nocturnal wildlife on Earth) or giant windmills in Jupiter's atmosphere.
At this point in time, solar energy conversion in space for planetary use is highly impractical and not possible.
A much better use of resources would be for conventional renewables to be developed or further improved for India. This country already has wind power but could use much more. The problem is more in the manufacturing sector. Support should be given in this area.
India could also develop wave and ocean current sources which are beginning commercial use in other countries. Free flow hydro on rivers should be encouraged to replace the construction of dams.
Drilling down for Geothermal a few miles would be better than seeking energy in outer space. Heat sources below the Indian continent are no deeper than they are in other parts of the world. Geothermal should be considered a major project to advance on the part of the Government.
We all understand the desperate need India has for energy but solving of this problem must be done with a common sense approach.
adrianakau2aol.com
Uh, for those talking about 24/7 power, what kind of orbit are you talking about? Geostationary, where they are locked over the point they are transmitted power to (remember, if your satellite is on the other side of the planet when India wants its power, you're gonna have a hard time beaming it thru the planet ;) . Or you try some kind of relaying off other satellites, with power losses....)
Not sure how far off geostationary is, and whether they'd receive Sun all the time or not. Moon base solar, sure. Satellites hanging over India...is everyone sure? (people are quick to point out 24/7 to India, but are they sure...?).
Even double the power, 24/7 versus days, I'd still claim isn't enough to warrant massive costs. (Lets call it 10 times the power, for 100 times the cost [of solar on the ground]. Is that logical?). Disagree with the massive costs? Talk to NASA :) . (Yes, there's little guys getting into aerospace, but remember those are suborbital flights with incredibly tiny payloads....)
Sounds to me as wacky as making ethanol from corn.
OverMatt make a good point.
I came to a similar conclusion on the point of non geostationary orbit posing causing problems for energy transmision.
This could be lessened by tansmitting an energy burst once or twice a day (to different places).
The transmitter would need to track the ground station, trading off transmission efficiency with transmission time [based mainly on the fact that water is very good at converting microwave energy into heat, and Earth's atmsphere is water-rich]:
The more atmospere the microwave beam has to pass through, the greater the energy loss and risk of variation in atmospheric conditions.
The greater the tracking angle to the base station, the more atmosphere is in the way.
The higher the energy of the beam, the less time it takes to tansmit the power, but the greater the rate of loss to the atmosphere.
Side effects?:
Cooking passenger planes! (metal in a microwave..)
Atmospheric disturbances caused by rapid heating of atmosheric watervapour.
Global warming! The leaking of heat during transmission would effectively be an increase in the amount of energy entering the eco-system. Without this being consumed in non-heat productive (endothermic) processes.
Of course, there is a distance at which the station could be geostationary, and receive worthwile ammounts of solar 24hrs/day, though I beleive it would be much much too far to be tenable.
Not sure how far, but much further out than the moon (the Moon is easily eclipsed by the Sun).
[no figures as I don't actually know any planetary measurements/distances]