Renewable Energy Innovator Seeks Orbiting Solar Panels
First posted on 09-19-2008
High energy prices and the concept of renewable energy has some people thinking. And devising new ways of harnessing the natural energy already available in ways we might be able to use in the future.
One such person is John Mankins, president of the Space Power Association and proponent of harnessing solar energy in space and sending it Earthward as power. Mankins presented a small scale demonstration of such a feat last week, and it was featured on Discovery Channel’s Project earth program.
To support his idea that large solar panels can be used to collect energy from the Sun and beam it to Earth as microwaves, Mankins devised an experiment he used to transmit microwaves from the island of Maui to its neighboring island, Hawaii.
With specialists from both the United States and Japan, a $1 million budget and about four months time, Mankins wanted to demonstrate that progress in finding energy solutions could be made relatively inexpensively by combining knowledge from different sources.
A key concept in Mankins’ larger scale ambition is that clouds and dark of night hinders the effectiveness of Earth-bound solar panels. But collection devices orbiting the planet can get the full blast of the Sun around the clock and microwaves can send that energy to Earth even through thick layers of clouds. He hopes to be able to launch a pilot solar panel into orbit by 2018.
Mankins may need that time to figure out how to cut the costs of providing solar energy from an orbiting power plant. It’s the weight of the materials needed to construct such a station that becomes cost prohibitive. At current prices, it costs a little over $9,000 per pound to place objects into space. Which, of course, makes the price per watt of energy produced far higher than anything on Earth.
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Comments:
Interesting story Robert. Your site is looking good!
Thanks, Janet. I am a little worried about microwaves beaming in from outer space since I use the same waves to warm up my leftover meatloaf, but I thought this guy might be on to something and imagined we could someday get inexpensive electricity or at least warmed from the inside out.