Conventional resources such as coal, wood and organic material, on the one hand, and ethanol, wind and ground-based solar energy, on the other, are either produced in limited quantity or are quite expensive. They also require huge energy storage systems, not to mention the fact that they harm the environment. There is, however, one potential future energy source that is environmentally friendly and of unlimited potential. Preliminary calculations reveal that it can be cost competitive with any renewable source. If this were a riddle, I am sure the reader would be impatient. Well, it is “space solar power.”Is this a scenario from the future? No, not really; the technology already exists. The project needs a space solar power system, which requires large solar energy collectors in orbit around the earth. These panels are expected to collect far more energy than land-based units. Land units are likely to be obstructed by weather and in northern countries, by long nights and low angles of the sun during the day.
The collected solar energy would be beamed to earth from space via wireless radio transmission. It would be received by antennas near cities and other energy-consuming centers. This received energy would then be converted to electric power that would be distributed through the existing infrastructure.
How expensive would this energy be? US officials and scientists have come together to make crude calculations and have come up with an approximation. The cost of electric power generation from such a system could be as low as 8 to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh). This is about what consumers pay now in the US, and it is less than what is charged in Turkey (15 cents).
There are two difficulties concerning the cost effectiveness of space solar power. The first is the enormous expense of launching the collectors into space, and the second is the efficiency of their solar cells.
So far much of the progress has been made in the American private sector. Private firms together with NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services are trying to develop the capacity for low-cost launching of a solar power satellite system.
For a decade and a half, the US government has invested more than $100 billion, directly and indirectly, in a space station and supporting shuttle flights. This investment may be taken as infrastructure capital that may yield high returns if an energy production project is built on it.
Experts increasingly have come to believe that energy from space really is one of the crucial “three principal sources” of renewable electricity, along with wind and thermal solar farms. These three offer mankind the best hope for being able to zero out carbon dioxide (CO2) in electricity production.
The project offers us a reliable alternative to other sources, whose byproduct is CO2 emission and nuclear proliferation. That is why we need to diversify our portfolio and develop an international initiative for obtaining solar energy from space cheaper than today’s estimated cost. This initiative must be supplemented with a parallel effort to find better and cheaper ways to store wind-produced energy and to develop a more efficient distribution grid. Experts say that if these are done we can use 20 percent more energy.
All of these initiatives need large economic resources and the pooling of scientific intelligence. Hence they must be international. So let us go and harvest the sun!
