Large-scale solar power farms could get a boost at dawn and dusk with space-based reflectors that shine additional sunlight towards them.
That is the aim of a project at Glasgow University that has received €2.5m from the European Research Council (ERC) to take the idea forward.
Solar absorber concentrates efforts on solar power plants
Professor Colin McInnes of Glasgow University’s James Watt School of Engineering has received the ERC Advanced Grant to support five years of research into new ways of maximising solar power generation.
Professor McInnes’ project – ‘SOLSPACE: Enhancing Global Clean Energy Services Using Orbiting Solar Reflectors’ – will employ four postdoctoral researchers to work with him to devise, develop and demonstrate strategies for increasing the amount of energy produced by future large-scale solar power farms around the world.
According to Glasgow University, their work will outline the potential benefits of creating a constellation of gossamer-thin satellite reflectors which would redirect sunlight from orbit towards these large solar facilities on earth at the start and end of each day, when consumer demand for power is at its peak but the output of solar farms is weakest.
They will research the most efficient orbits and control strategies for the reflectors so that they can generate the maximum additional power on the ground while minimising the amount of stray light which reaches the earth.
The team will also work to develop and demonstrate new methods to automate the fabrication of the space-based reflectors, thereby lessening the danger of them being damaged during their journey to orbit and deployment.
In a statement Professor McInnes, who in 2018 was appointed as the RAEng chair in Emerging Technologies: Space, said: “The broad range of services delivered by the space sector are information-based; satellite navigation, telecommunications and Earth observation. However, the possibility of delivering energy from space offers entirely new opportunities for the future.
“The delivery of global clean energy services is one the key challenges for the 21st century. I’m delighted to have received this Advanced Grant from the European Research Council and I’m looking forward to starting work with our team on this exciting project to understand how space technology can contribute to the future of global energy services.”
Wouldn’t reflectors on the ground be a more sensible place to start?
Great April Fools day joke, I almost fell for it!
Not quite, Jack: https://erc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/document/file/erc-2019-adg-results-pe.pdf
Shouldn’t the reflectors be diverting the sunlight away from the earth to reduce gloal warming rather than pointing more heat at the planet?
If mirrors are 100 microns by 1km x 1km then volume is 10^2 cu m of material; say alumnium then the weight would be approx 2×10^5 kg or 200 tonnes.
Of course if it was made of thinner stuff (as used for solar sails – say 5 microns) then weights of the order of 10 tonnes might be achievable.
But the tricky thing would be fabricate them (in space? -possibly blow form?) and then to control the orientation, flatness and focus.
[The Sunjammer solar sail was about 40 m sq , 1600 sq m, and weighed approx 70kg]
I am not certain of the insolation at orbital height; I would guess around 1000 W/sq m; so 1 km square would have an energy input of approx 1 GWatt…
Seriously though, the idea is a joke! Any country with a coastline can permanently harvest all the electricity they’d ever need by amalgamating wind/wave and tidal power with energy storage. These are simple, robust, durable designs that any Victorian engineer would recognise. The only part of the planet that’s not suitable is where the sea freezes – not many people live there.
Curtailment will become an expensive problem, if too much PV capacity is installed, since battery storage at grid scale is uneconomical. Another €2.5m down the R&I drain, on ‘blue skies’ research, when what we need is for applied science to displace the bad designs we currently import.
Thanks for the fascinating link, Jason: still not convinced tho’.
It is very re-assuring to see the types of R&D going on through the EU. The reflector is probably the most practical of them.
I loved the Mainz project on modelling Ents; the French project on Lattices in a parallel and quantum world, and the Dutch research on Meerkats in the galaxy. Looks like I missed out on the possibilities of pure science.