UK-based company Space Solar is partnering with Reykjavik Energy and Icelandic sustainability initiative Transition Labs to develop a space-based solar power plant that can deliver about 30 megawatts of electricity – potentially enough to power between 1,500 and 3,000 homes – from 2030. The system will collect sunlight in space through solar panels and then transmit it as radio waves at a specific frequency to a ground station, where it will be converted to electricity for the grid.

The satellite is expected to be scalable and quite big. Even if a full version of their CASSIOPeiA power array is not built, we are talking about the heaviest single object in space that is not a space station, and when all the arrays are splayed out, much larger than the International Space Station.

The company aims to have a scaled-up version of the system in space by 2036, which would supply gigawatts of electricity.

  • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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    21 days ago

    This sounds fucking wild. I’ve heard about doing this before, but I assumed we were far off actually trying it in any practical sense

    I hope this actually happens

  • kabi@lemm.ee
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    21 days ago
    1. capture light in space
    2. shine light down to earth
    3. capture light on earth
    4. sell electricity for profit

    simple as

    • shapesandstuff@feddit.org
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      21 days ago

      Yeah im curious about it but it sounds like lossy-er solar farming… Perhaps its about surface area and around the clock availability?

      Now i imagine pirate power radiostations…

  • arrakarkA
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    21 days ago

    The Soviets tried this before; not explicitly for power but for lighting.

  • ramenshaman@lemmy.world
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    21 days ago

    They had these in a game I used to play, I wanna say Sim City 2000? It was called a microwave power plant and I think occasionally the beam coming to Earth would miss the power plant and start a fire, but my memory’s a bit fuzzy.

  • macniel@feddit.org
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    21 days ago

    The company aims to have a scaled-up version of the system in space by 2036, which would supply gigawatts of electricity.

    by 2036? We are all dead by then…