Japan plans for solar energy from space
In what could be seen as a nod to science fiction, Japanese scientists are making detailed plans to gather solar energy in space where it is abundant and then beam that energy down to earth.
There are no clouds or weather fronts in space to obscure the rays of the sun, nor air to refract them, so the rays of the sun are about five times stronger in than on Earth. Virtually speaking, a solar panel, properly positioned in space, gets 100 percent of the power of the rays of the sun 100 percent of the time. That promise of efficiency has led a legion of science fiction writers to build fictional solar collection systems in space which then send all of that efficiently gathered energy down to the planet below on laser or microwave beams.
Japan is now in the process of selecting a group of companies and research organizations to work with the government in turning that science fiction dream onto reality, according to a story on PhysOrg. It is the perfect answer for a country like Japan, which owns little in the way of fuel resources and is therefore reliant on imports for its energy needs. Japan’s latest answer is the Space Solar Power System (SSPS), in which arrays of photovoltaic dishes several square miles in surface area would float in geostationary orbit above the Earth’s atmosphere.
A report by one of the industrial participants says “Since solar power is a clean and inexhaustible energy source, we believe that this system will be able to help solve the problems of energy shortage and global warming. The sun’s rays abound in space.” Once the energy is harvested by the SSPS, it would ride to Earth on laser or microwave beams, to be collected by gigantic parabolic antennae, located well away from populated areas for safety.
The project started in 1998 and is aimed at producing a usable system in the one gigawatt range (about the output of a medium-sized nuclear power plant) by the year 2030. This space-solar technology potentially carries fewer risks than does nuclear power, with the added bonus of having many fewer environmental drawbacks. The technology is unproven, but the hopes are high and the rewards are to great to ignore.
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November 8th, 2009
Rewards are great indeed! Wouldn’t this be awesome, to generate electricity here on the planet by capturing energy from space that would otherwise pass us by? Nice! Seems to me the biggest hurdle is going to be getting a link from a stationary place in orbit down to a rotating point at the surface.
November 9th, 2009
quite incorrect. It is unable to gather energy 100% of the time due to the fact that the solar panels would have to orbit the Earth, thus allowing it to be in the sun’s direct sunlight a MAXIMUM of 50%. Even then it would have to be rotated so that it is always facing the sun.
Quite expensive and most likely would have no place in the current world.
November 13th, 2009
I think this is the great step on moving towards the future and I think this is the solution of the global warming.
Thanks for posting and I am looking forward for some more like this..Keep posting.