SPS Alpha - NASA's plan to beam solar power from space

Hi there, I’m Jervis Whitley. You’re listening to WindFront, the weekly roundup of the wind industry from Australia and around the world. This week I’ll cover the SPS Alpha, NASA’s plan to beam solar powered from the outer space back down to Earth.

Now, the plan to build huge collectors of solar power in outer space and beam them back down to Earth to fulfil our power needs has been around since the 1960s. It’s not a new thing. What’s new is a recent study, just last year, by Mr. John C. Mankins from NASA, to determine whether or not anything has changed, that would mean that such a plane is feasible now. John’s study found that with current technology level, the collection distribution of soul power may be economically feasible and has recommended a bunch of further work be done to understand the implications of having such a contraption built in space. But at this stage, he is recommending that the further study be done and that it may be economically feasible. In fact, he says that the energy could be sent to Earth at a cost of about 9¢ per kilowatt, which is about $90 per megawatt hour.

And we’re not talking small amounts of energy either. The largest system, the 9¢ per kilowatt system, was looking at about 2 gigawatts of power. And the way it works is you have small, very thin mirrors that are tiled in space, maybe to the shape of like a flower, it looks like in the photo, and all these little mirrors are concentrating the light onto a smaller source where it collects into a PV panel, converted to electricity, and then beamed down to Earth via microwave, or RF, down on Earth. There’s a base station, which will collect the RF and convert back into electricity and feed back into the grid. Now, their goal to make money with this system is to have these collectors based all around the Earth in different markets, electricity at different times of the day, while they’ve got direct from the satellite, and then, as the satellite moves out of you, switch onto a different base station, provide power to a different market.

Now, what makes this system more feasible now, isn’t some technological breakthrough. John’s architecture of the system is what’s inspired their change in their visibility. His proposed design is biologically inspired. Similar to mimic, kind of like what an ant colony or a beehive is like, whereas there’s some of very small parts bending together to make up a whole. And so his design has very small radiators all banded together, each making up part of a larger signal being beamed down into Earth. It’s his goal that these smaller components, when built in scale, would deliver cheaper cost per component and constructing them up in space based on very few components at a very cheap price per component, would be easier to do for a robot and easier to launch up there in the 1st place because you’re not building a huge monolithic design, which was what was proposed originally in the 60s.

I found it interesting reading through John’s report as he focusses on how our markets are set up for electricity. He talks about the base load power that it could provide, and about $90 per megawatt hour. It’s a bit expensive for a lot of base load power. But then he touches on other areas of power that we have here on Earth being, I guess, the peaking power, which it could provide. But also he sees that there’s application for other niche power applications, which he thinks could be in the dollars per megawatt, perhaps remote communities or metals or chemical applications.

He then turns his attention to looking at how the power could be used in space itself. So instead of beaming the power back down to Earth, maybe beaming it across to a power state, the International Space Station, or furthering our exploration on Mars or even on the moon. So if you’re looking into the sky and wondering when this is going to happen, probably not in the short term. Apparently a pilot project might take 20 to 25 years to get up and running.

And running out the week’s week will go through the weekly top three. We’ve got Macarthur, number one again, just over $1.3 million for the week. Waubra and North Brown Hill following far behind. So that’s it for me this week. Check out the PDF I’ve linked to on the site for the full details. The full report has been released on the NASA website. And until I see you next time, keep buying those green electrons.