China has announced plans to build a giant solar power space station, which will be lifted into orbit piece by piece using the nation's brand-new heavy lift rockets.
headline not claimed. 1 km2 as a continuous flat surface that can be pointed at sun is 250mw from commercial cells. Outside of our atmsophere, irradiance boost is only 33%. so 340mw. Geosynchronous over China will only gain up to 3 hours per day of sun. That can be a 75% boost in average daily power.
except microwave energy transmission… While a 50% efficient transmission is possible (effectively 250mw earth equivalent delivered), it needs a 100 square km receiver array. Even at 150mw per square km earth solar, is enough space for 15gw of solar.
So, it only makes sense at much larger scale, and only makes sense if denser energy costs as astronomically high as such a project. Beaming energy to other points in space, or even remotely powering a spacecraft are applications.
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headline not claimed. 1 km2 as a continuous flat surface that can be pointed at sun is 250mw from commercial cells. Outside of our atmsophere, irradiance boost is only 33%. so 340mw. Geosynchronous over China will only gain up to 3 hours per day of sun. That can be a 75% boost in average daily power.
except microwave energy transmission… While a 50% efficient transmission is possible (effectively 250mw earth equivalent delivered), it needs a 100 square km receiver array. Even at 150mw per square km earth solar, is enough space for 15gw of solar.
So, it only makes sense at much larger scale, and only makes sense if denser energy costs as astronomically high as such a project. Beaming energy to other points in space, or even remotely powering a spacecraft are applications.