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British startup plans to supply solar power from space to Icelanders by 2030, in what could be the world's first demonstration of this novel renewable energy source
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- Title
- Breakthrough coming? Iceland could get solar power from space in 2030
- Authors
- Tereza Pultarova
- Published
- Oct 24 2024
- Word count
- 654 words
Doesn't Iceland have some of the best geothermal activity in the world? Surely that would be a more efficient method of renewable energy.
Also there's 0 chance this is happening in 5 years.
Wiki says iceland is 99.98% renewable.
(Renewable energy certificates from there are also a bit of a greenwashing whoopsie: they apparently export certificates to companies abroad that want to be greener. And then of course they sell the actual electricity to domestic customers. Now both customers think they paid for renewable energy - after all it's hardly possible tk get non-renewable power in Iceland, right?)
Well it would certainly be cool if it works.
I'll be curious to see how they address these issues:
The article doesn't go into it, but I'm also curious what kind of solar technology they plan to use. I assume it's PV of some kind.
The company does not explicitly state what wavelength they are using, but I’m guessing it’s very large. They state on their website that their goal is a receiver on earth that is about 5km in diameter. This would suggest they are using an incredibly long wavelength for power transmission.
Long wavelength radiation is able to pass through small objects without interacting with them. You can stand next to a 50kW AM radio station tower and feel nothing at all. The long wavelengths used by AM stations pass through humans easily without interacting with us. A 50kW microwave emitter right next to a human would basically explode them because microwaves are a small enough wavelength to interact with water.
Even if this company was sending terawatts of power, a large enough wavelength would let it pass through clouds and people with no interference.
EDIT: Fun fact, we do use short wavelengths to transmit data because they are able to hold more information than longer wavelengths. 2.4Ghz WiFi is just about the same as what your microwave uses to cook food. WiFi transmitters are just so low power and unfocused that the amount of heating they do to our bodies is imperceptible.
You may notice your phone’s WiFi signal decreasing if you stand next to a running microwave. The small amount of radiation that leaks from your microwave is enough to overpower the signal from your router, but still unnoticeable to our bodies.
The important thing to remember about microwaves is they're 1000+ watts. Imagine 1000 watts worth of LED bulbs and ask if you could cook a chicken with it.
To be fair though, LED bulbs are designed to put off as little heat as possible, because for lightbulbs heat is waste. One of the big advantages of LEDs over incandescent bulbs is that incandescent bulbs run way hotter.
I'm taking about radiative heating, I.e. heating via photons.
This doesn't seem to be what the comment you replied to is talking about. I'm actually having trouble finding resources by searching for that phrase as you write it here, is there an alternative name for it I should be using when searching? When I google it I just find resources talking about normal thermal radiation (alongside ads for certain types of HVAC systems).
My point was replying to add context to the standard microwave safety concern: people see microwaves heating a chicken and think microwaves have a powerful effect on flesh compared to normal light, but that's just not the case. The performance differs between microwaves and LEDs, sure, but most LEDs are 1-10 watts, which is at least a 100x difference in magnitude.
Try the term "radiant heating", perhaps. There are two types of heating: radiative heating and convection heating, where the latter is by circulating heated/cooled air onto your body and the former is from photons hitting your body and thereby dumping their energy as heat onto you.
Heaters of all types tend to do both - indoors, oil heaters/radiators will heat the walls, and then the walls emit the heat back over time as infrared that directly strikes your body and heats it. But obviously they're also heating the air, which then heats you.
Ah okay this is much clearer to me now that you explain it at more length, thanks!
I'm damn well gonna try!
Though I imagine the energy transfer from microwaves is a lot more efficient than regular light. It'd probably be effective if the bulb was in contact with the chicken though
That's all familiar to me, the part of the article that caught my attention was about it being high frequency:
But I suppose the approach may be high frequency (assuming that's drifting into microwave territory) spread over a large area receiver so that it's not especially dangerous if something crosses it's path. Essentially high power transmission at a safe W/m^2 level. It still feels like the "orbiting a solar receiver" isn't remotely going to be the most challenging part of trying to actually do this.
I think that might just be terminology that seems confusing if you don’t have the context. High frequency radio is indeed high in the context of radio waves, but all waves in the radio spectrum are quite low. It’s 3 to 30 MHz, whereas microwave is 2.4 GHz. The wavelengths are 10 to 100 meters, whereas microwaves are 1m to 1mm. So while it being “high” frequency sounds scary, it’s actually quite low frequency.
Gotcha, thanks for clarifying! That makes way more sense.
What I'm curious about is the viability of harvesters without the satellite. Do the radio waves need to be focused for this to work or can a harvester work just from the background radiation from natural sources in space.
Starship must be seriously reducing launch costs if this could be viable. Isn't it like 10k per kilogram to launch something into space? At that price you'd probably be better to just spend the money on 100x as many solar panels on the ground and geographically distribute them.
I guess this is less about cost feasibility and more about pushing the borders of technology. It's still a shame that we could be investing this money into actually efficient green energy products, but that could be said about all the money that gets poured into natural gas and oil companies too.
Before clicking on the article I also had imagined something more low tech. I know that in the 90s the Russian space agency was experimenting with actually reflecting sunlight through a mirror (effectively a big reflective canvas).
I believe at the time this was mostly pitched to light up places up north in the winter and such. But I'd think it might also allow for solar panels to also generate power at night keeping the heavy components on earth.
I suppose, assuming it even works, this would also not be without issues. Light pollution would be taken to a whole new level if this was ever deployed at scale.
Fittingly, Die Another Day also largely takes place on Iceland.
Though the system described in the article has more in common with the power plants that kept putting my cites on fire in SimCity 2000.
A couple reactions off the dome:
I am curious why this works with Iceland, it sounds like it would require a geostationary orbit to offer 24/7 power, and Iceland doesn't seem like the best choice? Somewhere near the equator would seem to work better. Assuming the beam needs to be continuous and aimed at one specific receiver.
Or is it going to be used to briefly charge a giant battery while it's overhead, and that battery will last long enough until the next rotation brings it overhead?
I'm not entirely sure if this means a single satellite can supply several power stations at the same time. Either way, the article says they won't be in geostationary orbit, so a single specific receiver would be impossible, and multiple satellites would be needed to provide continuous power to a single power station.
As for why Iceland:
I think that's just where the company is based, and they plan to export the technology.
Ah, I missed that first quote. Makes slightly more sense, but yes then it would seem it would need multiple satellites rather than one. I don't understand how one could maintain a continuous beam with Iceland. Maybe I got the wrong idea from the article, it sounded like they were implying a single prototype could supply 24/7 power.
Reading this article reminds me of the novel Powersat by Ben Bova. Not an amazing read but a fun popcorn/long flight book.
Excited to see if this would work out practically.