Thursday Things: 200th / Super Solar Edition
8 June 2023. Vol 5 No 23. By Dan McGirt. #200
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Solar power? Yeah, I’m just giving this stuff away all day. Photo by Rajiv Bajaj on Unsplash
Solar power from space!
I know, I know. Technically all solar power comes down from space.
But this is something specific, and a Thursday Things favorite topic that we last covered in the 22 December 2022 Spaced Out Edition. Yep, it’s our old friend space-based solar power.
As you know, one of the drawbacks of solar power down here on the ground is that the sun is not always shining. Most notably the sun gets nights off. Even during the day, cloud cover can block those solar rays.
But in space it’s a different story. The sun is always on!
The idea of space based solar power (SBSP) is to park solar power satellites (SPS) in orbit, catch the rays up there, then beam the power down to the ground.
It’s that last step that has been a little tricky to figure out. But scientists at Caltech have done it!
Scientists Beam Solar Power From Space to Earth in World First
The main limiting factor for solar power is intermittency, meaning it can only collect power when sufficient sunlight is available. To address this, scientists have spent decades researching space-based solar power (SBSP), where satellites in orbit would collect power 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, without interruption.
That’s what I just said, yes.
To develop the technology, researchers with the Space Solar Power Project (SSPP) at Caltech recently completed the first successful wireless power transfer using the Microwave Array for Power-transfer Low-orbit Experiment (MAPLE).
I strongly suspect someone on this research team is Canadian.
Another article explains it concisely:
Caltech prototype funded by O.C. donor beams solar power from space — a terrestrial first
A small prototype launched into orbit in January by a team of Caltech researchers and engineers has successfully demonstrated solar energy can be harvested in space and beamed down to Earth in an endless supply.
The institution announced Thursday a power signal transmitted by a small demonstration unit orbiting 550 kilometers above the planet was recently detected by a receiver on the rooftop of a laboratory on Caltech’s Pasadena campus.
Ali Hajimiri, Bren professor of electrical engineering and one of two co-directors on the project, confirmed transmission occurred May 22.
“It took a few moments for it to sink in, then everybody got really excited,” he said in an interview Thursday. “This technology for wireless energy transfer can have a tremendous impact on lives, both on Earth and in space.”
It works! I’m sure there is much more work to do, but the concept has been proved. And what Caltech doesn’t figure out, the Japanese will:
Meanwhile, the Japanese are working on similar technology that will attempt to beam solar energy from space in 2025.
Nikkei reports a Japanese public-private partnership will attempt to beam solar energy from space as early as 2025. The project, led by Naoki Shinohara, a Kyoto University professor who has been working on space-based solar energy since 2009, will attempt to deploy a series of small satellites in orbit. Those will then try to beam the solar energy the arrays collect to ground-based receiving stations hundreds of miles away.
It’s only a matter of time (and money, of course) until researchers work out the technical details to move from prototype to operational space-based solar power.
Meanwhile, Space X and other companies have helpfully reduced the cost of getting the needed satellites into space. So SBSP could be a real thing within the next decade.
What does that mean?
I’ll let CalTech project leader Ali Hajimiri explain:
"In the same way that the internet democratized access to information, we hope that wireless energy transfer democratizes access to energy. No energy transmission infrastructure will be needed on the ground to receive this power. That means we can send energy to remote regions and areas devastated by war or natural disaster."
Just like the Air-gen technology we highlighted in last week’s edition, which can generate electricity from thin air, space-based solar power offers an endless supply of cheap (relatively speaking), clean, flexible energy that can be sent almost anywhere on the planet — including places it would be impossible to extend conventional power lines to.
Democratizing access to energy, as Hajimiri says, is a good way to put it.
Many foresee an age of and doom and gloom in which the world accept limits on our energy supply and limits on our achievements. But I disagree. We have infinite energy available to us, enough to power pretty much anything we want to do. We are not in an Age of Limits except in the limited imaginations of too many people.
We are in an Age of Abundance.
That said, Thursday Things is not an energy newsletter, despite our topics these past two weeks. However, this is a newsletter about whatever is interesting, uplifting, cool, and intriguing. I hope the Air-gen and SBSP items we’ve featured in these most recent editions intrigue and excite you and give you hope for a brighter future than we’re often told to expect.
We’ll get off the energy beat and move on to other topics next week.
Unless they announce cold fusion before then.
Thank you for reading!
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