Sending 30 GW of power to England.

[ALAN/ALAN D]

I cant find confirmation that Homer Simpson is involved in this project.

Sending 30GW of power generated in space to England by.

EITHER A MICROWAVE BEAM OR A LASER BEAM.

I have concerns standing near my 600 watt Microwave oven.

Hand held Lasers can make people blind. I have seen children playing with them shining them at each other. I managed to get hold of them and return the lasers to the parents and offer advice.


The Space Energy Initiative (SEI) is an exciting new project that could see Britain set up the first power station in space by 2035. It will be made up of satellites with lightweight solar panels and a system of mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto the panels, generating around 3.4 GW of electricity on the satellite. By the mid-2040s, the power generated from the space station could reach 30GW, accounting for up to 30 percent of the UK’s electricity demand.


Solar panel equipped, energy transmitting satellites collect high intensity, uninterrupted solar radiation by using giant mirrors to reflect huge amounts of solar rays onto smaller solar collectors. This radiation is then wirelessly beamed to Earth in a safe and controlled way as either a microwave or laser beam.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/ ... ive-spacex

[Stinsy]

Thanks for posting. I needed a good laugh!

[Stig]

That story's been knocking around for a while though, the Express must have finally run out of news about the royal family or house prices!

[Mart]

I saw this being tested on a TV programme probably 15yrs ago. There was a series (6 parts I think) that each week tested a green idea, such as covering parts of Greenland with white sheets to reduce melting, dropping thousands of mangroove seedlings from helicopters to seed sea defences, dropping large CO2 torpedoes off a ship and seeing if they are travelling fast enough when they hit the sea bed to be buried, and contained by the pressure, etc..

One episode looked into the space PV idea. The part they tested was the ability to send the energy about 100 miles, and through the Earth's atmosphere. It was carried out between Hawaiian Islands, and they did transmit energy. I can't remember how efficient, or not, it was. But I seem to recall that it suggested it was possible, but of course many, many issues with getting it to work well / economically. I think a helicopter was involved, but not sure if that was for transport, or part of the experiment, sorry.

[nowty]

I think this is something you don't want to explore because the most practical use of it would be a military one.

[Mart]

If anyone's interested I managed to find info about the series on Wikipedia, and also a news article discussing the energy beam experiment in Hawaii. My 15yr guess wasn't bad, it was back in 2008.

Researchers Beam 'Space' Solar Power in Hawaii

Although the amount of power sent, 20 watts, is barely enough to power a small compact fluorescent light bulb, and most of it was lost in transmission, the system was limited by the budget not the physics. If they had been able to afford more solar panels, more phased array transmitters and a better receivers (the one they had could only receive in the horizontal direction), Mankins claims they could do much better-- possibly up to 64% efficiency.

Project Earth (TV series)

[AE-NMidlands]

I think this is something you don't want to explore because the most practical use of it would be a military one.

... in which case it has probably been investigated or even developed by all sides already, "goodies" and "baddies alike!"

I wouldn't want to live anywhere near its civil application ground station: a) if it can go wrong, it will...
b) if you lived in a country which happened to antagonise an aggressive autocracy, the control software would offer too tempting a target: Dead easy to destabilise its aim at the receiver on earth, apparent "own goal" by host country, easy denial by aggressor. ("Why blame us for your high tech going wrong? Maybe you had just get better at it!")
A

[Galahad]

I think this is something you don't want to explore because the most practical use of it would be a military one.

Israel are in the process of developing one for missile defence called 'Iron Beam'.

https://www.defensenews.com/training-si ... se-system/