Solar Energy Using Mirrors
Click Here to register and get your Free “Squidoo Lens Creation for Newbies”
What’s the feasibility of having solar energy concentrated onto a solar power station from a satellite?
I understand one of the major disadvantages of using solar energy to generate electricity is that the availability of the sun is NOT 24/7. Moreover, some climates only get sunshine a few days a year. As a thought, we could have huge parabolic mirrors mounted on a Geo-stationary satellite concentrating solar energy onto a Solar Power Station here on earth. The solar energy could then be used to generate electricity by use of solar panels and thermally by heating water with the solar energy. This solar energy should be available 24/7/365 because the satellite will always be in view of the sun. How feasible is that?
They’re already considering using satellites, but not in that way.
They’re thinking of using satellites equipped with thin film solar cells to generate electricity that is then beamed down to receivers on Earth using microwaves.
This is probably more sensible than just using mirrors when you consider that mirrors reflect visible light (and I’m not sure what their full wavelength response will be either…), which can be blocked by clouds.
Thin film solar panels aren’t much heavier than mirrors anyway (the ones we make in my lab are 2-3mm of glass, the solar cell itself is about a thousand times thinner and stuck to the back), and by converting to microwaves, you can beam the power back down regardless of whether it’s cloudy or not!
Wiki has a page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power
Japan are talking about putting one in orbit by about 2030 iirc!
Closet door mirrors for solar heating
