California scientists are creating a space solar power plant: it will be sent into orbit in December
Caltech's hugely ambitious Space Solar Project is gearing up to launch the first prototypes of space-based solar panels into orbit. These advanced ultra-lightweight designs will collect, convert and transmit energy wirelessly. Read more about the innovation told the publication New Atlas.
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It's obvious why everyone wants to harvest solar energy in space: 24-hour access to virtually limitless solar energy, without the obstruction of the atmosphere, not to mention the weather.
The energy potential in space is about eight times better per square meter of solar panel than here on Earth. The problem has always been how to do it and how much it will cost. The costs of launching, assembling and maintaining equipment in space are astronomical.
The scale of the space solar installation is staggering, and the unprecedented challenges pose formidable obstacles every step of the way.
Undeterred and even encouraged by these challenges, the Caltech team has been working on the space solar energy project for nearly a decade. It started with an incredible donation of over $100 million from Irvine Company Chairman Donald Bren back in 2013 — a donation that has only recently become known. Northrop Grumman added another $2015 million in 17,5.
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The project developed essentially in three streams. One group has been working on incredibly lightweight, high-efficiency photovoltaic cells with a power-to-weight ratio about 50 to 100 times greater than even the solar panels currently used on the ISS and modern satellites.
The second team is focused on developing ultra-lightweight, miniaturized and low-cost equipment for converting energy from solar panels into radio frequency energy and then redirecting it to Earth.
The two teams combined their developments into functional 'tile' prototypes of about 10 cm (3,9 in) area, combining solar energy capture, conversion to radio frequency and wireless transmission. These highly integrated, highly flexible tiles weigh less than one tenth of an ounce (less than 2,8g) each. They are designed to be folded up with virtually zero usable space, placed on a booster and sent into orbit where they deploy themselves.
Thus, the entire space solar array is conceived as an ultra-modular assembly. The tiles are designed to deploy a strip 2 m (6,6 ft) wide and up to 60 m (197 ft) long. These lanes are combined into modules of about 60×60 m (197×197 ft).
A third group worked on how to build an array that combined thousands of tiles into modules and thousands of modules into a colossal array for transmitting solar energy with an area of about 9 square meters. km (3,5 sq mi). This group is tasked with creating ultra-light and ultra-thin space structures for these modules that fold incredibly tightly and then autonomously expand into massive modules and retain their shape and position.
This team has already done an amazing job. Inspired by Japanese origami and kirigami, they designed and prototyped roll-up, folding, self-assembly structures, including twist joints, weighing only 150 grams per sq. m (0,45 oz per sq. ft).
Then comes the problem of tilting the solar panels towards the sun as much as possible, at the same time aiming their transmitters at the giant receiving stations on the Earth below. And the question arises as to which orbit to choose - geosynchronous, constantly directed to one receiver on Earth below, or a lower, cheaper orbit, which would require several solar panels and several receivers.
Financial mathematics at this stage would seem to favor the latter; five solar arrays in medium earth orbit, equipped with two-way solar panels and one-way transmitters, would appear to have an advantage in terms of levelized cost of energy (LCoE), even if such a system would require 39 space launches, and not just 13 as for geosynchronous single battery systems. But the cost of space solar energy will still be in the range of $1-$2 per kWh. It will be quite difficult to sell given that electricity in the US currently sells for less than $0,17 per kWh on average.
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The level of difficulty here is probably best described as comical. And yet, under the leadership of Caltech professors Sergio Pellegrino, Harry Atwater, and Ali Hadjimiri, the Space Solar Power Project team continues to tackle this problem. This pioneering work has led to dozens and dozens of published research papers.
Already in December of this year, the prototype will be tested in space, which is an important milestone.
New Zealand company Emrod recently told us that it is much cheaper to build a ground-based renewable energy harvesting network and simply transmit the energy via satellite. But be that as it may, the audacity of the Space Solar Power project, as well as the fundamental achievements made in several different areas, make it a project of great significance.
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