Solar energy from space for Iceland in 2030
Space Solar, the world leader in space solar energy, in cooperation with Transition Labs, announced an agreement to supply electricity from the first-ever solar power plant located in space to Reykjavik Energy. How will they send energy to Earth?
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Renewable energy straight from space
Space Solar has developed an innovative solar energy system that will orbit the Earthusing solar energy and by transmitting it wirelessly using safe high-frequency radio waves (2.45 GHz) to terrestrial receiving stations.
These stations will convert the energy into electricity and feed it directly into the power grid, providing clean, renewable energy 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, regardless of weather or cloud cover, and the costs electricity will be similar to the costs of renewable energy from traditional intermittent sources.
3 MW to start, already in 2030
The first, the Icelandic power plant will deliver 30 MW of energy in the next five yearswith plans to scale up to a large-scale system by 2036, where each power plant in the future will be able to deliver gigawatts of energy to Earth. Work is currently underway to select locations for terrestrial receiving stations in Iceland. Iceland, Canada and northern Japan are potential locations for additional receiving stations as development occurs power plant constellation.
With the urgent need to achieve climate neutrality, Space Solar’s scalable technology provides a key solution. Independent analysis by Imperial College London shows that incorporating 8 GW of space solar power into the UK’s energy mix could deliver more than £4 billion in annual system cost savings.
It will be a very large object in orbit
We are talking about an object whose sizes will no longer be counted in meters, but in kilometers. In fact, we are talking about dimensions that would be impressive even on Earth. Meanwhile, the entire structure will have to be delivered element by element to high Earth orbit (35,786 km).
In the case of solutions generating 2 GW of energy, the CASSIOPeiA space installation is to have 1700 meters alreadyplus retractable reflectors focusing the light, a the whole thing will weigh 2,000 tons. There is no doubt that such a large object will be easily observed from Earth. Moreover, the stations receiving high-energy radio waves will also be large. We are talking about receiving antennas with a diameter of up to 5 km.
If the pilot program of space power plants is successful, the night sky will have many new “stars”, as if rows of Starlinks were not enough. However, this does not seem to be a high price to pay for 100% environmental neutrality on Earth.
