{"id":348715,"date":"2025-10-13T01:04:32","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T00:04:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/?p=348715"},"modified":"2025-10-12T20:32:24","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T19:32:24","slug":"space-based-solar-power-finally-ready-to-shine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/?p=348715","title":{"rendered":"Space-Based Solar Power Finally Ready to Shine?"},"content":{"rendered":"
Scientists have dreamed of putting solar panels in outer space since the late 1960s, and have known that space-based solar power was technologically feasible since the 1970s. But the true race for space-based solar has only just begun, driven by the intensifying need to produce more electricity to meet rapidly growing energy demand. As more of the world becomes electrified, big data and AI become omnipresent, and decarbonization deadlines draw closer, innovative energy solutions are needed more than ever. As a result, space-based solar power is finally ready for its day in the sun.<\/div>\n
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This nascent technology employs enormous satellites to collect high-intensity sunlight and beam it down to Earth, either through microwaves or lasers. A receptor on Earth receives that energy and converts it into electricity to be fed into the grid. This energy would be dispatchable, as satellites would have gargantuan range and could flexibly beam energy to where the demand is greatest.<\/div>\n
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The production potential of space-based solar power is enormous. Because the panels are situated beyond clouds and the atmosphere, and are not impacted by the rotation of the earth, they receive high levels of unadulterated sunlight 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. As a result, these systems are capable of producing a potentially game-changing amount of clean energy.<\/div>\n
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According to calculations by researchers from King\u2019s College London, space-based solar power could reduce Europe\u2019s need for land-based renewable energy by as much as 80 percent, and reduce battery-based energy storage needs by more than two-thirds. The kicker? It would reduce the cost of Europe\u2019s energy system by as much as 15 percent. The researchers found that the associated savings in terms \u201cenergy generation, storage and network infrastructure costs\u201d would save an estimated 35.9 billion euros (41.7 U.S. Dollars) per year.<\/div>\n
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The higher energy density of space-based solar means that energy systems would need far fewer costly resources. Such a system \u201crequires orders of magnitude fewer critical minerals to provide the same continuous power as a terrestrial solution with large-scale energy storage,\u201d reads a recent article from the World Economic Forum. \u201cThis offers a more sustainable path, alleviating the strain on resources that the International Energy Agency (IEA) has identified as a key challenge,\u201d the report continues.<\/div>\n
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Critically, these systems would also require far, far less land than Earthbound solar farms. Not only would we be outsourcing solar panels to outer space, the receptors that receive the solar energy here on Earth would be relatively small and mostly transparent, meaning that they would be well-suited to mixed-use spaces. This would alleviate intensifying issues of land scarcity faced by utility-scale renewable energies.<\/div>\n
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As the considerable benefits of space-based solar gain more attention, investment in their development has ramped up considerably. Labs in the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Japan, Europe, and other locations around the globe are all accelerating their research programs to advance space-based solar power, and high-profile private investors are now joining the trend as well. Big tech bigwig Baiju Bhatt, a co-founder of Robin Hood, launched the space solar startup called Aetherflux last year.<\/div>\n
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But space-based solar power still faces some key hurdles before it can be scaled for commercial use. The most significant of these, according to the World Economic Forum, is the way that private finance is structured around early-stage startups and not long-term infrastructure projects. While space-based solar power will be a big money saver in the long term, it will not provide quick or necessarily predictable returns on investment.<\/div>\n
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For this reason, startups are looking to government contracts to get space-based solar power off the ground. “We think that the military customer is large enough \u2014 and for lack of better word, difficult enough \u2014 of a customer that if we can serve, we can build a constellation and we can be at scale, Christian Garcia, managing partner at Breakthrough Energy Ventures, one of Aetherflux\u2019s backers, told CNBC. \u201cAnd at that point, we will have dropped the cost of the technology such that we can expand into other customers.”<\/div>\n
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By: Haley Zaremba<\/div>\n
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Scientists have dreamed of putting solar panels in outer space since the late 1960s, and have known that space-based solar power was technologically feasible since the 1970s. But the true race for space-based solar has only just begun, driven by the intensifying need to produce more electricity to meet rapidly growing energy demand. As more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67315,"featured_media":348763,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-348715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oil-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/67315"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=348715"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":348766,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348715\/revisions\/348766"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/348763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=348715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=348715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=348715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}