How Much Power Loss Can We Expect from Space-Based Solar Farms?

[Josh111]

I saw this article and wanted to see anyone is interested in discussing what percentage of power will be lost in transmission/transformation in a situation like this:Solar Plant in Space Gets Go-Aheadhttp://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/solar-plant-in-space-gets-go-ahead/?_r=1

http://qz.com/152384/japans-plan-to...-from-a-giant-solar-power-plant-on-the-moon/#!

 

[Simon Bridge]

Actually they should represent a gain over the equivalent ground-based systems since the flux harnessed has not been filtered by the atmosphere and the energy generated can be beamed at a frequency that largely bypasses the filtering.

It's an idea that's been around a while.

 

[Josh111]

Understood that there is less energy loss in irradiance, but how much energy is lost in the entire process of transforming the energy from electrical to microwave, transmitting it, and then transforming it again. Isn't it much higher than that of a induction transformer we use today?

 

[Simon Bridge]

Any equivalent process will have equivalent losses + the radio wave step.
So your question is, "how efficiently can we generate and receive radio-waves".

This is something you can look up.

The whole process breaks even, compared with equivalent ground-based solar plants, if the losses in the radio step are the same as the gains in additional irradience converted. Something else you can look up.

We don't know the exact processes proposed - but you can see the potential by assuming the most efficient process available for each step.