Solar stations in the heavens?
At an altitude of 22,240 miles above the earth, orbital solar stations would be one of the biggest steps undertaken for governments and energy companies. However, orbital solar stations would give a constant deliverance of sunlight, even more than 2,000 MW of clean solar power in some proposed projects.
Orbital solar stations have three advantages over normal earth based solar stations. First of all it must be daytime for an earth based solar stations to get its energy from the sun, next to that the solar array must be pointed towards the sun without any obstacles between the array and the sun. Finally, the sunlight powering the solar array must pass through the bulk of the atmosphere and the sky must be clear for optimal use. Because of all these factors an earth based solar array produces almost 80 percent less energy then orbital based solar stations. Furthermore, the sun shines continuously in space and because of the lack of an atmosphere, sunlight carries 35 percent more energy.
This would be a great way to harness the sun's energy to the fullest extent. Solar panels can be inconvenient because it must be daytime, not cloudy, and nothing can be in the way. So if its in space it would be far more efficient and at creating an unlimited supply of usable energy. But as the article stated, it would be a huge project and I'm guessing very costly, although I think its well worth it to creat so much energy. One question I have that it didn't explain in the article, how would they get all of that solar energy back to Earth?
ReplyDeleteThe idea of giant solar panels in space seems really awesome. It's a new idea that seems to have a lot of potential and can extend the earth's lifespan by a lot if it is successful. I agree with Ciara though, how would the solar energy gathered by the panels be sent back to earth without scattering or beaming into space? If they had to bring down the pannels every time it was charged that may be a small issue itself. That was the one problem that I thought of after reading this though; overall I think it's an amazing idea and hope it will take place as soon as possible--it will really benefit earth.
ReplyDeleteThis would be a very useful way to get the mass amounts of energy we use in our daily lives. The one problem would be that this is expensive and transporting that energy back to Earth. I feel if we learned how to do all of these things and developed the idea better, then we would be able to save the energy we are constantly wasting and get our planet back to it's rightful self, instead of harming it.
ReplyDeleteThis would be useful for obtaining energy from the sun, but I feel that the flaws are greater than the benefits at this pint, the cost of getting the satellite up into space is not worth the energy being sent back as it is highly inefficient at this point, if the idea was developed better, it would very much help with our energy needs
ReplyDeleteI'd love to see this working well. Admittedly, I find there are already many satellites, and we don't exactly need many more. But the solar energy that's being produced seems like a realy good advantae to it. I agree with Arun though, that the cost of etting it into space would be a lot, but if it's developed a bit more it could turn out to be extremly helpful.
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