Space-based solar power could help Europe reach net-zero by 2050 by reducing the need for land-based renewable energy.
  • phutatorius@lemmy.zipEnglish
    5·
    7 小时前

    Someone wants public subsidy money.

    Look at the ROI, and if the full lifecycle cost is greater than earth-based solutions, fuck 'em.

  • xthexder@l.sw0.comEnglish
    171·
    20 小时前

    lol, what an insane idea…
    A physical cable back to Earth is impossible, otherwise we’d already have space elevators.
    Any other wireless transmission would have all the same weather problems and energy losses, it would be WAY cheaper to just build more solar panels on the ground.

  • TheWeirdo@lemmy.mlEnglish
    161·
    23 小时前

    Countries will do everything except build nuclear power plants ig.

    • phutatorius@lemmy.zipEnglish
      34·
      7 小时前

      Or make more use of renewables. Nuclear has never been cost-efficient, it’s just that the costs have been buried in state subsidies to the industry and its supply chain.

      • Waryle@jlai.luEnglish
        6·
        6 小时前

        Nuclear has never been cost-efficient, it’s just that the costs have been buried in state subsidies to the industry and its supply chain.

        A lie repeated again and again.

        French Cour des Comptes has released a report, back in 2012, the costs of the french nuclear fleet, everything included: 121 billions of euros between 1960 and 2010.

        2,4 billions a year. To provide decarbonized and reliable electricity for decades.

        To put in perspective, Germany is more than a trillion of euros in for their Energiewende, or about 40 billions of euros a year for ~25 years, and they still have one of the costliest and dirtiest electricity or Europe, while still not being close to stop coal and having no plan to get out of gas.

        And for more perspective, EDF had 118 billions of dollars of revenues in 2024, mostly coming from nuclear, and 11 billions of net results, including the payback of the interests of the debt that the french government imposed on EDF.

        Anyone claiming nuclear has never been or can’t be profitable or cost-efficient is either uneducated or a liar.

        When done right, nuclear is profitable as fuck, that’s empirically proved.

        • Fyrak@feddit.orgEnglish
          1·
          4 小时前

          That might have been true in the past, but right now renewable energy is by far cheaper and faster to build than nuclear energy. (Just look into the final end user prices they produce)

          As I believe you are German or at least can read it: here is something well written to read https://quellen.tv/energie#aber-frankreich2025

          Also there is more to Germany having costly electricity than not building nuclear power plants as you make it to be.

  • drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    14·
    22 小时前

    This is an idea from the 1960s back when they thought solar panels would be like computer chips and remain super expensive in terms of area but become exponentially better at the amount of sunlight they could convert into electricity.

    It makes absolutely zero sense to spend billions of dollars putting solar panels in space and beaming the power back to earth now that they are so cheap per unit area. The one thing you could argue a space based solar array could do would be to stretch out the day length so you need less storage, but that’s easier to accomplish using long electrical cables.

  • bitjunkie@lemmy.worldEnglish
    17·
    1 天前

    So could a fucking Dyson sphere. This article is PopMech-tier speculative trash. A flying car in every driveway, any day now since the 1960s…

  • Kissaki@feddit.orgEnglish
    141·
    1 天前

    This energy would then be transmitted to one or more stations on Earth. It is then converted to electricity and delivered to the energy grid or batteries for storage.

    How is the energy transmitted to Earth?

    • phutatorius@lemmy.zipEnglish
      4·
      7 小时前

      And keep in mind that, if they don’t do it, the sun transmits energy to the earth for free.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
      8·
      1 天前

      Yeah this article is severely lacking in any concrete details.

      I’d also like to know how exactly it is that they plan to deploy massive arrays of solar panels to space. Most earth-based solar farms are huge and take up entire fields, some are a few kilometres across in size. That’s many orders of magnitude more massive than anything we’ve previously ever launched.

      Plus whatever power transmission system they come up with would have to be powerful to be of any use but if it’s that powerful would present an active danger and would effectively constitute a space-based weapon system.

      It’s a cool sci-fi idea but it is all pie in the sky.

      • Cort@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        1 天前

        Back of the napkin math:

        Largest solar sail (much lighter than panels, but doesn’t produce electricity) 2000 sq meters

        200w/sq meter

        400kwp

        Also iirc the space solar farms plans I’ve seen call for re radiating the energy back via microwaves to dedicated receiving towers on the ground

        • phutatorius@lemmy.zipEnglish
          1·
          7 小时前

          Now factor in the launch costs, and make sure to include the probability of launch and deployment failures.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
          3·
          1 天前

          Yeah I’ve seen that. Microwave power beaming would work in theory it’s just electromagnetic radiation after all. But the vast majority of it is going to get absorbed by water molecules, because that’s what microwave radiation does, that’s why it cooks your food.

          They’re probably going to bake a lot of seagulls as well.

      • cecilkorik@lemmy.caEnglish
        202·
        1 天前

        Are they really losses when the leaking, unfocused energy turns all buildings in a kilometer radius into microwave ovens? Just fill them up with popcorn packets and invite everyone over for movie night. We could watch one of the James Bond movies where the villain has an orbital deathray. I think there’s at least a couple of them.

        • jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          9·
          1 天前

          I saw this documentary about a device that can concentrate solar energy, called a “Solex Agitator.” The project went sideways when this guy, who looked an awful lot like Christopher Lee, stole the prototype and tried to sell it to the highest bidder.

          The British government somehow got involved and sent a spy to…

          Wait… maybe that wasn’t a documentary.

      • Gladaed@feddit.orgEnglish
        3·
        1 天前

        It’s less about the loss and more about the space required for the receiver and the environmental hazard

  • ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.netEnglish
    211·
    1 天前

    I think climate change mitigation can be the next scam after AI. Once AI bubble bursts they will start looking for new investments and I think climate change is ready to start generating profits. People are desperate enough to start investing money in things that will limit effect of climate change. Who will profit? Corporation that will work on those projects. Anything space related (solar panels in space, geoengineering) will require Space X/Blue Origin. Google, Microsoft and Amazon are already invested in nuclear fusion and modular reactors. Tesla is an energy provider. Any CO2 sequestration projects will require new startups, obviously backed by the same corporations. My guess is very soon we will see governments paying those companies to solve the problem they created. Even more money will be pumped to the 1%. It went form “climate change isn’t real”, to “climate change isn’t caused by humans”, to “it is caused by humans but nothing can be done about it”. Next step will be “we can fix it if you pay us”.

      • Pussycuntisseur@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
        2·
        1 天前

        A good reminder of the definition of a parasite is it cannot live without a host. These corporations and capitalists can’t live without us but we can live without them which makes them a parasite.

        • phutatorius@lemmy.zipEnglish
          1·
          7 小时前

          Yep. Crying about the world no longer having billionaires would be like holding a funeral for a tapeworm.

    • Otter@lemmy.caEnglish
      131·
      2 天前

      The article is actually discussing a feasibility study for the far future (25 years from now as per the article):

      For the first time, researchers from King’s College London have assessed the possible impact that generating solar energy in space could have for Europe. They found it could cut energy battery storage needs by more than two-thirds.

      The study, published in Joule, analysed the potential of a design by NASA for solar generation, which is planned to be in use by 2050. The findings show the design could also save money by reducing the cost of the whole power system in Europe by up to 15%, including energy generation, storage and network infrastructure costs – an estimated saving of 35.9 billion euros per year.

      Space-based solar power generation involves in-space continuous collection of solar energy. This involves placing large solar panels on satellites in orbit, where they are exposed to much more sunlight and can continuously collect energy without being affected by clouds or the day-night cycle. This energy would then be transmitted to one or more stations on Earth. It is then converted to electricity and delivered to the energy grid or batteries for storage.

      It’s a cool idea and I’d imagine we’d need an array spanning the globe rather than just over one continent

      • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
        3·
        1 天前

        You could build a circle of satellites on the dawn dusk line, just have them do polar orbits. I think there’s such a thing as a solar stationary orbit.

        The thing is, 25 years isn’t really that far in the future. Not when you count all the lead in time. Firstly you have to invent the microwave power transmission array, that’s probably going to take it a decade, and that’s been optimistic, then you’ve somehow got to arrange to launch hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of solar power satellites, then you have to figure out a way for the satellites to transmit the energy to the transmission array, and you have to build the receiving array on earth.

        It took them 10 months just to build our companies new building, and it’s the most generic thing you’ve ever seen. How are they going to do all this in 25 years?

      • snooggums@lemmy.worldEnglish
        221·
        2 天前

        (25 years from now as per the article)

        Anything 20 years or more away is a pipe dream that isn’t likely to happen anywhere close to speculation.

  • Seefra 1@lemmy.zipEnglish
    357·
    2 天前

    This energy would then be transmitted to one or more stations on Earth.

    And how do you suppose to do that?

    Beam the power from space like they do in Mirai Shounen Conan? Or space shuttles with batteries? Or a giant cable that somehow doesn’t break?

    It’s not possible.

    • Blade9732@lemmy.worldEnglish
      24·
      2 天前

      Naw, you just beam it back to earth as a laser. That way you could highjack the signal and fill a house with popcorn kernals a to start a huge neighborhood block party.

    • mushroommunk@lemmy.todayEnglish
      171·
      2 天前

      Feasible? Only time will tell. Possible? Caltech did it two years ago. Look up MAPLE. Wireless energy transfer to/from space was achieved.

      • Crashumbc@lemmy.worldEnglish
        131·
        2 天前

        At what scale? Milliwatts? Watts? On cloudy days?

        This seems very much to fall into the “technically” possible, but impossible to scale realm.

    • BlazeDaley@lemmy.worldEnglish
      13·
      2 天前

      RD1 generates power 99% of the year and collects solar radiation by autonomously redirecting its reflectors toward a concentrator to focus sunlight throughout each day. RD2 uses flat panels, with solar cells facing away from Earth and microwave emitters facing toward the Earth. RD2 generates power 60% of the year due to its limited capability to reposition itself or redirect solar radiation toward its solar cells.

      https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20230017756/downloads/ASCEND SBSP Final 05162024.pdf

    • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zipEnglish
      51·
      1 天前

      Microwaves or even Masers. This is nothing new, lot’s of studies and experiments. It’s not infeasible, efficiency not that bad either. But solarpanles on earth have only advantages, especially integrated in roofs or walls.

    • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.mlEnglish
      41·
      2 天前

      It would probably be done with lasers. Its not perfect tech rn but it is possible. If not the most efficient for its price