Virtus Solis is a funded startup working to develop space based solar power. They would leverage the low cost launch of the SpaceX Starship and modular satellites to enable power to be beamed from space at lower cost than coal or natural gas power.
Twenty five thousand 1-kilowatt solar power modules would be launched in each reusable SpaceX Starship launch. They would be assembled in space like legos. The orbit for each array would provide power for about 12 hours of a day. Two arrays would provide 7X24 hour power.
Today, the per kilogram cost of a Falcon 9 launch is $1520. Starship’s larger size would allow it to drop that down by 40% to $970 on day 1 (assuming the total cost of launch for both remains at $100 million). SpaceX Super Heavy Starship, with improved Raptor engines, could launch 300 tons in expendable mode or 180 tons in reusable mode. The expendable Starship would be launching for about $330 per kilogram. A fully reusable Starship that could be flow 20 times (like a Falcon 9 booster) would bring the cost down to about $33 per kilogram.
Space-based solar power essentially consists of three elements:
* collecting solar energy in space with reflectors or inflatable mirrors onto solar cells or heaters for thermal systems
* wireless power transmission to Earth via microwave or laser
* receiving power on Earth via a rectenna, a microwave antenna
International Space Based Solar Projects
A Kyoto Japan Group, led by Prof Shinohara, plans an experiment around fiscal 2025 to transmit power from orbital small satellites ground. Small satellites will be used to send it to ground-based receiving stations from hundreds of kilometers away.
There is about 30 megawatts of solar power deployed in space right now. However, the power is being used in space and is not being transmitted back to the Earth. The 4000+ SpaceX Starlink satellites each have about 7 kilowatt hours of solar panels.
The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology also have space based solar projects.
Chongqing University is developing space based solar technology in China.
In 2022, the European Space Agency announced its plans to launch several Solar Power Satellites under the name Solaris. It is stated that these installations would be about 10 times greater than the current ISS (International Space Station). The whole network of these Oribtal Powerplants would produce about 1.000 TWh, which comes down to a third of the whole energy consumption of the European Union
The Japan group successfully ran microwave power transmission experiments horizontally in 2015 and vertically in 2018, both over a distance of 50 meters. Vertical transmission with distances between 1 km and 5 km will be attempted in the future.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
Now this looks to give Space Based Solar Power a real boost
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-06-efficiency-lightweight-solar-cells-space-based.html
-publiusr
Airplane interference?
If the power transmission is laser or even microwave that is high density energy per area, would the FAA need to route planes these invisible beams of high energy transmission?
Imagine drones being flown by kids all of a sudden going dead and dropping out of the sky or someone with an ultralight who wasn’t wearing a mirrored helmet (laser) or some faraday reflector (microwave).
Doesn”t the solar wind blow on these humongous type of solar arrays and kilometer sized telescopes and push them out of the orbit that we would want them to stay in ?
No…they are in our gravity well
How does this compare to beaming it from the moon?
Moon beaming has a slightly worse duty cycle, and the minimum investment before you get your first Watt of power hitting the grid is, conservatively, about a million times larger. (Because you need a ginormous transmitting antenna on the Moon, given how far away it is.)
If wireless transmission is practical, wouldn’t the first uses be in the other direction?
Send power up to satellites so they don’t need heavy solar panels.
If wireless transmission works, wouldn’t the second application be to send power up to the satellites, then back down? At first to high value remote customers like military or zero emission shipping? These consumers pay 10-100x as much for energy as most electricity customers do.
We should see both of these applications become mature industries before we see true space solar.
The receivers require huge arrays of rectifying antennas. Not practical for a satellite, only on the ground.
What about Reflect Orbital
https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7z3yq/this-man-is-trying-to-put-mirrors-in-space-to-generate-solar-power-at-night
That much energy being beamed to the surface somewhere. Hmm, you definitely wouldn’t want to get in the path of the beam; accidentally or on purpose.
It’s very diffuse and completely harmless. The receiving array is kilometer-scale.
Simcity 2000 taught me otherwise.
Not Bob Dole: My God, I can’t stop laughing at this. xD
My main question is, does this cause a significant uptick in heating of the planet? Obviously I don’t know enough about the science of it to *not* have that question. ^_^;;
Literally, not any more than the waste heat from burning the coal would. To the extent the solar power satellites are shadowing the Earth, it even has the potential to reduce it.
To be honest, it’s thought to be completely harmless. They really do need to prove that.
The projected peak power density is 250W/m2. That’s a quarter of the lowest intensity known to cause eye damage by thermal effects, but is comparable to the lowest intensity that’s been shown to cause avoidance behavior. (They were testing microwaves as a way to discourage birds from spending too much time at the ends of airport runways…)
Might be harmless, exactly because of that avoidance behavior, though it’s possible the gradient at a rectenna site would be too small for birds to navigate out of it.
I should say, avoidance behavior in chickens. Just to clarify.
On Mars, the synchronous altitude is lower, there is little atmosphere to interfere, plenty of nearby space for rectennas with no conflicting/environmental issues. For SpaceX, a major benefit of finding a business case for them on earth would be getting them cheap to use on Mars.
Ah, so an array of identical panels that integrate all functions, so as the array grows, you get a larger transmitting array. That is, I’ve long thought, the way to go.
They plan to reduce the entry level size by transmitting from a lower orbit than the GEO that O’Neill planned, at the cost of only a 50% duty cycle. I suppose once the idea proves out, they could move to GEO with larger arrays, for a near 100% duty cycle.
I don’t see them using this approach for laser; It would be difficult to integrate the transmission and power production like that at such a short wavelength, and not face the usual problems of a sparse array: A lot of power wasted in side lobes.
I wish them all the best of luck, they are going to face environmentalists insisting that their microwave beams are an intolerable environmental risk.
If Musk’s Mars plans advance, he might want a couple of those arrays for his Mars colony. Just assemble it in Earth orbit, and use the power for an ion engine, and you could get it to Mars easily enough, where the synchronous altitude is a lot lower.
Yep. Mars needs space solar power.
I just don’t see how they can get 50% utilization of an array.
At most the satellite can transmit 45 degrees over the horizon, and from LEO that’s only a couple of minutes, out of 90 to an orbit.
It’s in a highly elliptical “Molniya” orbit that causes it to loiter over the receiver for a large part of the day. Kind of poor man’s geosynchronous; It doesn’t get you 24 hour visibility, but it actually works better for high latitudes, which is why the USSR uses it so much. Wikipedia has a good article which I won’t link to, to avoid moderation.
I wonder at what point it becomes cheaper to build in orbit than on most particularly sought and expensive places on Earth. Space habs can and soon will be prefabricated in series, with standardized sizes, interfaces and costs per cubic meter.
When space habs become cheaper than building in New York, Hong Kong or Singapore, we will see some curious things happen: multinational companies building facilities for work and living, with the express purpose of jumping over developed country VISA and cost limitations.
Yeah, the problem of gravity remains. But that’s not as hard as it seems. Bolo configurations would be short term feasible. And we haven’t tried to solve the massive rotating habitat problem, because we lack the workhorse to launch the required materials in bulk.