Shimizu, a Japanese architectural and engineering firm, has a solution for the climate crisis: Simply build a band of solar panels 400 kilometers (249 miles) wide (pdf) running
all the way around the Moon’s 11,000-kilometer (6,835 mile) equator and
beam the carbon-free energy back to Earth in the form of microwaves,
which are converted into electricity at ground stations.
That
means mining construction materials on the Moon and setting up
factories to make the solar panels. “Robots will perform various tasks
on the lunar surface, including ground leveling and excavation of hard
bottom strata,” according to Shimizu, which is known for a series of
far-fetched “dream projects” including pyramid cities and a space hotel.
The company proposes to start building the Luna Ring in 2035. “Machines
and equipment from the Earth will be assembled in space and landed on
the lunar surface for installation,” says the proposal.
If
that sounds like a sci-fi fantasy—and fantastically expensive—it’s not
completely crazy. California regulators, for instance, in 2009 approved a
contract that utility Pacific Gas & Electric signed to buy 200
megawatts of electricity from an orbiting solar power plant to be built by a Los Angeles area startup called Solaren.
The space-based photovoltaic farm would consist of a kilometer-wide
inflatable Mylar mirror that would concentrate the sun’s rays on a
smaller mirror, which would in turn focus the sunlight on to
high-efficiency solar panels. These would generate electricity, which
would be converted into radio frequency waves, transmitted to a giant
ground station near Fresno, California, and then converted back into
electricity.
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Unlike
terrestrial solar power plants, orbiting solar panels can generate
energy around the clock. The part-time nature of earthbound solar power
means it can’t currently supply the minimum or “baseload” demand without
backup from fossil-fuel plants. However, the cost of lifting the solar
panels into orbit would be far higher than for building a photovoltaic
power plant on earth.
1
Not
much has been heard from Solaren since then, but last year Michael
Peevey, president of the California Public Utilities Commission, said in
a speech that the project was still under development. “Although this
sounds like science fiction, I am hopeful that recent advances in
thinner, lighter-weight solar modules will make this technology
feasible,” Peevey said. “I believe it is worth taking a chance on this
technology because as a baseload resource, space-based solar may help to
displace coal-fired capacity that would otherwise meet those needs.”
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But even
if the energy that eventually comes from a solar power plant on the the
Moon justifies the costs of building one—not to mention the fossil fuel
you have to burn to get the machinery up there—Shimizu’s greatest
hurdle may be staking a claim on all that lunar real estate, points out Wired. “Outer space law is notoriously difficult to apply in practice and may scupper the plans long before anything gets built.”
http://qz.com/152384/japans-plan-to-supply-all-the-worlds-energy-from-a-giant-solar-power-plant-on-the-moon/
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