Australia is going to have make it Rd2 of being an energy commodity superpower. 40 years of exporting coal to China, it can look forward to 1000's years of export solar to APAC.
Space based solar might not take a form where we just put mirrors in space to boost the output of existing terrestrial solar cells. The benefit is that the receivers on the ground can receive energy directly from the sun when the sun is up, and the space mirrors can be used to provide light to areas that are completely dark in winter.
I don’t think microwave beaming is ever viable
Most fusion concepts are thermal power plants. Those have inherent downsides that have nothing to do with the nuclear energy providing the heat for the steam turbines. So they will never fully replace renewables. Helion’s concept might work. But that remains to be seen.
The station couldn't be used as a threat. And its use would be very limited in time.
Taking out the rogue orbital power station would be a competition between very trigger happy militaries. Who wouldn't want to demonstrate their satellite killers on a legitimate target?
Stuff in space is very vulnerable due to the high cost of shielding. How would an energy weapon in space fare against its hardened counterparts on the ground? How would it defend against clouds of shrapnel?
High ground is beneficial because you have direct line of fire where the enemy hasn't. But there is no ground to hide behind in orbit.
So what about this orbiting duck of yours, the power station recently turned rogue?
Look, the satellites you share an orbit with are adjusting their trajectories to intercept yours. Undisturbed, they will pose collision hazards within the next days. You must fry them all before they complete the adjustments. Do you have a real time feed of their position for targeting? Bet you do, you're a supervillain after all.
But some satellites are passing behind earth, they will complete their manouvers before they emerge from earth's shadow. The first hit is predicted in just 130 hours.
But hey a bunch of missiles took off on the other side of earth, they are now on a ballistic trajectory that intercepts your station's orbit. Thanks to your flawless targeting, you manage to melt some of them. Their debris will hit anyway, your station has 19 minutes left before impact.
Meanwhile, some subs poke laser scopes out of the sea, taking shots at your station. You divert your energy from the incoming missiles, but when you try to hit one, the scope is submerged again. You produce a plume of steam.
And what is this? What was supposedly a radar array starts to beam microwaves your way. Your station overheats in seconds because it has almost no mass and lots of surface. You could've taken out maybe one of the hundreds of antennas in the array if your comms hadn't already been crippled by a laser.
As you lift your gaze from the now useless controls, the sky is lit by a tactical nuke that was hiding in a spy satellite. It happened to be close enough for a crippling EMP blow.
Once we start making these predictions with no single one of such project even planned, then people start predicting about all sort of bat shit crazy ideas "within the next 100 years" and there is no philosophical razor we can employ to discern them from the legit ones.
I've read "in 100 years" about many technologies that we'd supposedly have in our current era.
It's an often used qualifier to dodge what can turn out to be meritless predictions. Just long enough into the future to sound promising, but also far enough into the future to not tempt a need for supporting evidence.
In my view if we don't have the underpinnings or motivation today to support such forward looking statements, then there is no genuine foundation for claiming that the situation will improve merely as time moves on. Technology only comes about when we make it, and only develops rapidly when there is a significant motivation for putting serious manpower behind it.
One could just as easily say that we'll have small and portable fusion reactors that completely satisfy our energy needs.
You get the same if you place solar panels in places around the equator, without all the messiness of orbital repairs and GW death rays. I can't see this being cheaper than just some panels on the ground.
The funny thing about solar panels is that they are the most efficient at very low temperatures. They'd be more efficient at the poles or high up in the mountains where they can be kept cool.
If only thermodynamics was this easy. Heat pumps ain't magic, alas, they are still subject to physical limitations, including the laws of thermodynamics.
Also keep in mind that cooling the hot part of your space heat pump is very limited: there's no convection nor conduction in space. You can only lose heat energy via radiation or ablation (= shooting away hot pieces).
I'm talking about waste heat from when you use the electricity.
Almost no matter what machine you are powering, be it a a toaster or a computer or an electric car or a washing machine, eventually turns all of the electric energy into heat.
(You can contrive some counter-examples. Eg if you point a sufficiently strong laser pointer at the sky, some of the energy will escape earth before turning into heat here.)
Land will never become the limiting factor on earth, at least not for solar power.
Assuming the worst-case predictions of climate change come true, there will be more than enough desert capacity along the equatorial areas to provide power for the rest.
> Land will never become the limiting factor on earth, at least not for solar power.
What makes you think so? There's always more you can do with more energy. 'Never' is a long time. And there are opportunity costs from other uses you could put land on earth to.
You are right that it will be a while before remote corners on earth become more expensive than space for solar power generation. But not 'never'.
(Btw, if you think really big, the limit for how much power we can use on earth is given by how much waste heat we can radiate into space.
At some point, you don't want to keep beaming down energy from space into earth, even if you somehow could convert 100% of the received power into electricity with no losses: because at the end all the electrical power used will still turn into heat. Heat that we will have to get rid of.
At that point in time, you might want to use the electricity directly in space, eg to run data centres there, and just beam the results of the computations down.)
> Assuming the worst-case predictions of climate change come true, there will be more than enough desert capacity along the equatorial areas to provide power for the rest.
While climate change might become unpleasant, I have no clue what it has to do with any of this? The surface of the earth will stay roughly constant and so will its orbit, and the sun will shine regardless of what happens on earth. (And I assume that if you wanted to badly enough, you could easily float solar panels on top of the ocean; at least easier than blasting them into space.)
> What makes you think so? There's always more you can do with more energy. 'Never' is a long time. And there are opportunity costs from other uses you could put land on earth to.
The entire world's power supply could be met by sacrificing just 3.27% of the US [1]. The Sahara desert is already economically useless as it is completely and utterly inhospitable, unable to support life beyond a few shrubs, insects and felines.
> While climate change might become unpleasant, I have no clue what it has to do with any of this?
Simple, the amount of desertified space will grow, and so space that is now unusable for solar power because it can actually be used at the moment can then be used for power.
> The entire world's power supply could be met by sacrificing just 3.27% of the US [1]. The Sahara desert is already economically useless as it is completely and utterly inhospitable, unable to support life beyond a few shrubs, insects and felines.
So? We can always grow our energy consumption to meet supply.
> Simple, the amount of desertified space will grow, and so space that is now unusable for solar power because it can actually be used at the moment can then be used for power.
The oceans are a lot bigger than all the deserts put together.
What advantage does Australia have over other Asia pacific countries to justify the infrastructure costs? Only Singapore where space is at a premium. Other countries can generally find space (even if over the water) and their worker costs for maintenance will be far lower.
Surely solar panels are affordable with typical Australian household incomes? And much more effective even in southern Tasmania at 45°S as compared to southern Finland at 60°N (where they're apparently cost-effective since they're building solar farms).
If they feel their electricity provider is screwing with them, why not make their own? Probably even with batteries it would pay for itself given the ROI I'd guess panels have there
Any roof over your head, or balcony where at least some solar can be installed to reduce electricity costs, costs a million plus USD-equivalent in Australia? That seems... unlikely
We have one of the most expensive property markets in the world. An apartment is still possible for under a million however. The median for homes last I looked was due to, or had breached 1.6 million AUD with apartments at a median in the mid 800k AUD range.
Whether or not said apartment is suitable for solar however is not guaranteed. You need both a balcony large enough and in a position to capture the sun. Both things likely to push you towards the higher end of the market at 700-800k.
“Just like last year, Australia's largest capital city ranked as the second least affordable major property market in the world. With a staggering median multiple of 13.8, typical Sydney homes cost about 13 times the average household's annual income.”
2. Housing stock from cheap fuel times facing globalised energy prices.
3. Network assets being corporatised and partially privatised and there having been incentives for these monopolies to invest in unproductive assets for which they are permitted to recover their costs.
4. Costs of competition in the retail sector.
5. Government policy creating uncertainty in investment decisions for renewable assets.
6. The vast majority of consumption is early evening, so not much Sun.
That is a very complicated way to say "The government is in bed with the guys that own all the energy companies, and they have guaranteed them profits for a long time to come."
