Space based solar power Puns

How promising is the idea of space based power generation and wireless energy transmission back to earth in the current century? I feel like it could be resolved fairly quickly with an international collaboration with even a few percentages of the effort and funding being spent of clean and traditional energy

The UK government recently published a report they commissioned from engineering consultants Frazer-Nash on the viability of Space-Based Solar Power. You can find this report here.

I’m going to run through the advantages to such a system, what role it would have in the energy system, and then why I think the UK won’t develop its own system.

How does this work anyway?

Satellite that is almost entirely solar panels goes up to space. Beams power back to Earth using radio waves which are received by a (very big) antennae on the ground.

Is this real or is it sci-fi nonsense?

The authors conclude that the technology is probably feasible. However, it will not be operational before 2042.

What are the advantages?

There is no night in space, so satellites can provide 24/7 base load power. This would complement storage technology (interesting that the report doesn’t talk about storage or demand-side response at all). Once the technology has been researched, it is likely to be cheaper than other forms of baseline power - nuclear, gas with carbon capture, or biomass.

This would also take up comparatively little land. The antennae and the control centre would require much less space than biomass.

Disadvantages

There are three main disadvantages: money, time, and technical issues.

“Phase 1” would likely need to be funded entirely by government as there is no expected return on investment. This is trials in the atmosphere, setting standards, and such. FNC estimate that this would require £350m over 5 years. Total investment would likely be around £16.5bn in today’s money. In 2019, HMG spent £94.6m on renewable energy innovation (everything from lab research to first-of-a-kind demonstrators), so this would require spending a large majority of that budget on space-based solar - forget about conventional solar, wind, or marine energy. Another comparison - the UK recent launched a competition to fund floating offshore wind projects with a budget of £17.5m over three years. £350m is a huge investment.

The next issue is time. FNC suggest a timeline which sees the UK getting 10GW of electricity from space-based solar in 2042. That means that to be ready for 2050, there can be no more than eight years of delays, including this one right now. After nine years, HS2 has been delayed by 2