Dream of Harvesting Solar Power From Space Gaining Momentum

Space harvesting of solar power  .... 

The Dream of Harvesting Solar Power From Space Is Gaining Momentum

By Edd Gent, June 18, 2023  in SimilarityHub

The idea of beaming solar power down from space might seem like something out of a sci-fi movie. But new legislation in Congress, a funding announcement from the UK government, and the first successful test of the technology all suggest its moment may be coming.

Getting your solar energy directly from space makes a lot of sense. The atmosphere doesn’t get in the way, and there’s no day and night so you can generate power around the clock. But to produce significant amounts of electricity you need to get a huge amount of equipment into orbit, which has historically been prohibitively expensive.

Rapid reductions in the cost of launches and the advent of new rockets that can carry much greater loads like Space X’s Starship are starting to change the calculus, though. And a growing number of governments are getting serious about turning to space in their quest to slash their carbon emissions.

Last Tuesday, UK Energy Security Secretary Grant Shapps announced £4.3m in funding for several projects aimed at developing the underlying technology required to make space-based solar power feasible. The following day, an amendment was added to a bill before the House of Representatives instructing NASA to work with the US Department of Energy on the technology.

“A lot of the technology that once made this source of energy the work of science fiction is now much cheaper, and easier to deploy than ever, putting it within reach,” said representative Kevin Mullin, D-Calif, who proposed the amendment, at a meeting of the Science, Space, and Technology Committee.

It’s not just falling launch costs that are renewing interest in the technology. In January, Singularity Hub reported on the launch of a space mission designed to test key bits of hardware that will be necessary. Earlier this month, the team from Caltech behind the launch reported that, for the first time, a small amount of energy had been beamed down to Earth from a satellite.

The mission features several separate experiments designed to test different components, but the recent success involved the microwave transmitter. The device can direct a beam of microwaves in different directions by varying the timing of signals sent to its 32 antennae, and the team used this to transmit 200 milliwatts of power to a receiver at Caltech.

There’s still plenty of other bits of technology that need to be developed before an orbiting solar farm can become a reality, though. Aside from the antennae, the Caltech team will be testing a variety of different solar cells to see which can best survive in space, and also a lightweight device designed to unfurl a large, flexible solar panel.

The funding announced by the UK will be going towards developing some of the fundamental technologies required. The University of Cambridge and Welsh technology company MicroLink Devices UK have both received money to develop lightweight solar panels, while Queen Mary University in London has received backing to develop a long-range power transmission system.

Beyond the technology, more work also needs to be done to flesh out the feasibility and economics of space-based solar. The University of Bristol has received funding to develop a large-scale simulation that will help model the performance, safety, and reliability of the technology. Imperial College London, on the other hand, will use its grant to study the impact the technology could have, including how it could be integrated onto the grid.

But the combination of space technology and solar power is an obvious one, Mamatha Maheshwarappa, from the UK Space Agency, said in a press release. “Space technology and solar energy have a long history—the need to power satellites was a key driver in increasing the efficiency of solar panels which generate electricity for homes and businesses today,” she said.  .... 

Space Based Solar Power

A considerable next step for Space exploration.

Caltech Tests Space-Based Solar Power Using a satellite as testbed for wirelessly beaming power from orbit  By Ned Potter   in IEEE Spectrum

For about as long as engineers have talked about beaming solar power to Earth from space, they’ve had to caution that it was an idea unlikely to become real anytime soon. Elaborate designs for orbiting solar farms have circulated for decades—but since photovoltaic cells were inefficient, any arrays would need to be the size of cities. The plans got no closer to space than the upper shelves of libraries.

That’s beginning to change. Right now, in a sun-synchronous orbit about 525 kilometers overhead, there is a small experimental satellite called the Space Solar Power Demonstrator One (SSPD-1 for short). It was designed and built by a team at the California Institute of Technology, funded by donations from the California real estate developer Donald Bren, and launched on 3 January—among 113 other small payloads—on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

“To the best of our knowledge, this would be the first demonstration of actual power transfer in space, of wireless power transfer,” says Ali Hajimiri, a professor of electrical engineering at Caltech and a codirector of the program behind SSPD-1, the Space Solar Power Project.

The Caltech team is waiting for a go-ahead from the operators of a small space tug to which it is attached, providing guidance and attitude control. If all goes well, SSPD-1 will spend at least five to six months testing prototype components of possible future solar stations in space. In the next few weeks, the project managers hope to unfold a lightweight frame, called DOLCE (short for Deployable on-Orbit ultraLight Composite Experiment), on which parts of future solar arrays could be mounted. Another small assembly on the spacecraft contains samples of 32 different types of photovoltaic cells, intended to see which would be most efficient and robust. A third part of the vehicle contains a microwave transmitter, set up to prove that energy from the solar cells can be sent to a receiver. For this first experiment, the receivers are right there on board the spacecraft, but if it works, an obvious future step would be to send electricity via microwave to receivers on the ground.

A gold-colored square frame flying in space with Earth in background.Caltech’s Space Solar Power Demonstrator, shown orbiting Earth in this artist’s conception, was launched on 3 January.CALTECH

One can dismiss the 50-kilogram SSPD-1 as yet another nonstarter, but a growing army of engineers and policymakers take solar energy from space seriously. Airbus, the European aerospace company, has been testing its own technology on the ground, and government agencies in China, Japan, South Korea, and the United States have all mounted small projects. “Recent technology and conceptual advances have made the concept both viable and economically competitive,” said Frazer-Nash, a British engineering consultancy, in a 2021 report to the U.K. government. Engineers working on the technology say microwave power transmissions would be safe, unlike ionizing radiation, which is harmful to people or other things in its path.

No single thing has happened to start this renaissance. Instead, say engineers, several advances are coming together.

For one thing, the cost of launching hardware into orbit keeps dropping, led by SpaceX and other, smaller companies such as Rocket Lab. SpaceX has a simplified calculator on its website, showing that if you want to launch a 50-kg satellite into sun-synchronous orbit, they’ll do it for US $275,000.

Meanwhile, photovoltaic technology has improved, step by step. Lightweight electronic components keep getting better and cheaper. And there is political pressure as well: Governments and major companies have made commitments to decarbonize in the battle against global climate change, committing to renewable energy sources to replace fossil fuels.

Most solar power, at least for the foreseeable future, will be Earth-based, which will be cheaper and easier to maintain than anything anyone can launch into space. Proponents of space-based solar power say that for now, they see it as best used for specialty needs, such as remote outposts, places recovering from disasters, or even other space vehicles.

But Hajimiri says don’t underestimate the advantages of space, such as unfiltered sunlight that is far stronger than what reaches the ground and is uninterrupted by darkness or bad weather—if you can build an orbiting array light enough to be practical.

Most past designs, dictated by the technology of their times, included impossibly large truss structures to hold solar panels and wiring to route power to a central transmitter. The Caltech team would dispense with all that. An array would consist of thousands of independent tiles as small as 100 square centimeters, each with its own solar cells, transmitter, and avionics. They might be loosely connected, or they might even fly in formation.

A sped-up series of pictures shows a square frame unfolding in a lab. An engineer watches in a smock and head covering.Time-lapse images show the experimental DOLCE frame for an orbiting solar array being unfolded in a clean room.CALTECH

“The analogy I like to use is that it’s like an army of ants instead of an elephant,” says Hajimiri. Transmission to receivers on the ground could be by phased array—microwave signals from the tiles synchronized so that they can be aimed with no moving parts. And the parts—the photovoltaic cells with their electronics—could perhaps be so lightweight that they’re flexible. New algorithms could keep their signals focused.

“That’s the kind of thing we’re talking about,” said Harry Atwater, a coleader of the Caltech project, as SSPD-1 was being planned. “Really gossamer-like, ultralight, the limits of mass-density deployable systems.”

If it works out, in 30 years maybe there could be orbiting solar power fleets, adding to the world’s energy mix. In other words, as a recent report from Frazer-Nash concluded, this is “a potential game changer.” ... '

Algae Powered ARM Chips for Low Energy

Note low energy specification.  How practical at this time?

Scientists Create Algae Computer Powered by Photosynthesis    By The Verge, May 17, 2022

Scientists have used algae to power a low-energy computer chip for six months.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge sealed a colony of cyanobacteria, commonly known as blue-green algae, inside a metal enclosure the size of an AA battery. The unit was then left on a windowsill, according to New Scientist, where the algae photosynthesized, generating a tiny current of electricity that powered an ARM Cortex-M0+ chip.

The system is only a proof of concept, but its creators hope algae-powered chips could be used in future Internet of Things devices. They say the advantage of using algae over traditional batteries or solar power is that it has a smaller environmental impact and could potentially provide continuous power.

"The growing Internet of Things needs an increasing amount of power, and we think this will have to come from systems that can generate energy, rather than simply store it like batteries," Professor Christopher Howe, joint senior author of the paper, said in a press statement. "Our photosynthetic device doesn't run down the way a battery does because it's continually using light as the energy source."

From The Verge

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Powering Smart Devices Indoors

We experimented with IOT powered by Solar indoors in retail settings.

 Common Solar Tech Can Power Smart Devices Indoors, NIST Study Finds    By NIST  August 20, 2021

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) studying the indoor charging capability of small modular photovoltaic (PV) devices determined that a mini modular PV device made of silicon, absorbing only light from an LED, supplied more power to a wireless temperature sensor than the sensor consumed in operation.

They said this indicates it is possible to power Internet of Things devices with PV modules.

The researchers found the silicon module converted 9.3% of the LED light into electrical power, compared to power conversion efficiency rates of 23.1% for gallium indium phosphide (GaInP) and 14.1% for gallium arsenide (GaAs) modules.

NIST's Andrew Shore said, "Even with a less-efficient mini module, we found that we could still supply more power than the wireless sensor consumed."   ... .' 

Advances in Splitting Water into Hydrogen/Oxygen efficiently

This could be a very big deal, considerable details at the link.  Had a job in a chem lab long ago that looked at this problem. 

Researchers develop a solar tech that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen with record efficiency   By Mark Anderson   in IEEE Spectrum

Israeli and Italian scientists have developed a renewable energy technology that converts solar energy to hydrogen fuel — and it’s reportedly at the threshold of “practical” viability.

The new solar tech would offer a sustainable way to turn water and sunlight into storable energy for fuel cells, whether that stored power feeds into the electrical grid or goes to fuel-cell powered trucks, trains, cars, ships, planes or industrial processes. ... '

New Solar Tech Emergent

How good and how soon is still unclear. 

Solar Closing in on "Practical" Hydrogen Production
Researchers develop a solar tech that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen with record efficiency
By Mark Anderson  in IEEE

Israeli and Italian scientists have developed a renewable energy technology that converts solar energy to hydrogen fuel — and it’s reportedly at the threshold of “practical” viability.

The new solar tech would offer a sustainable way to turn water and sunlight into storable energy for fuel cells, whether that stored power feeds into the electrical grid or goes to fuel-cell powered trucks, trains, cars, ships, planes or industrial processes.

Think of this research as a sort of artificial photosynthesis, said Lilac Amirav, associate professor of chemistry at the Technion — Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. (If it could be scaled up, the technology could eventually be the basis of “solar factories” in which arrays of solar collectors split water into stores of hydrogen fuel——as well as, for reasons discussed below, one or more other industrial chemicals.)  .... " 

Long Term Photovoltaic Sensors Power RFID

Impressive, if exposed to light, could power RFID chips for years.

Photovoltaic-Powered Sensors for the Internet of Things
MIT News
Rob Matheson

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers have developed photovoltaic-powered sensors that could potentially transmit data for years before they need to be replaced, making them useful for Internet of things devices like sensors that gather real-time data about infrastructure and the environment. The researchers mounted thin-film perovskite cells as energy-harvesters on inexpensive radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags. The researchers found that the solar power produced by the cells gives the sensors a significant boost that enables greater data transmission distances and the ability to integrate multiple sensors onto a single RFID tag. The researchers used the sensors to continuously monitor indoor and outdoor temperatures over several days. The devices transmitted data continuously at distances five times greater than traditional RFID tags. Said MIT researcher Ian Matthews, "Our next step is to integrate these same technologies using printed electronics methods, potentially enabling extremely low-cost manufacturing of wireless sensors." .. '

Flywheel Power

A soluton we examined.  The use of flywheels to store power to reduce charges for electical power spikes. In IEEE.

Transparent Solar Power

In IEEE Spectrum:  Transparent tiles that can capture solar power?  Work underway at Michigan State.

Nano satellites Powered by a Smartphone

In CWorld:   I like the modular simplicity.  " .... Fleet of CubeSat nanosatellites now orbiting earth, sending back data CubeSats built by NASA and various colleges lifted off Nov. 19 on a U.S. Air Force Minotaur 1 rocket ... NASA's CubeSat, called PhoneSat 2.4, is powered by a Nexus S smarthone and uses a solar array to keep it charged. Engineers are hoping it can stay working in orbit for at least two years. Part of its mission is to find out how long it can remain active and send data back to earth. ,,, " 

Paintable Batteries

From Work at Rice University.   Including power delivery from a surface that could be charged with solar. Not quite ready for application, but the portable delivery of power is an increasingly important capability.