In the US our typical Global Energy Consumption is:
20,000,000,000,000 Watts
The solar power hitting the earths surface is:
500,000,000,000,000,000,000 Watts
but who is to say that we need solar photovoltaic cells on earth.
What if we don't have them on earth, but instead, have them in space. we could somehow have mass numbers of solar panels orbiting our plant. That way there wouldn't need to be non-energy producing panels during the night time. As of now, we could get 12hrs in a typical day minus the climate of the weather. Clouds, Rain, storms all get in the way of producing energy but, we wouldn't need to worry about, less time, or the climate in orbit.
one con of this is that we are troubled to get the energy being stored back to earth. We cannot have long wires just hanging from orbit to earth. ha ha ha. then anyone can climb into space, and some dumb mountain climber will definitely try it!
Think about this:
We don't need wires, HOW DOES THE SUN GIVE US ENERGY, WIRELESSLY!!
We can have one space based solar panel station, that is the concentration of all the energy. or maybe more than one, ok, actually a few of them. The small solar panels will concentrate the energy into these bigger panels, and then the bigger panels will re-direct the energy via laser or the same way the sun does with light i.e A LASER
We can have this laser point at different locations, power plants, that will supply the globe!.
Crazy!, I didnt even know there was other people who thought this same thing. I just googled it right now and other people thought of this exact same idea. I was just typing off the top of my head, in the above, oh man. Im great!
It was really interesting, the friday lecture. and it was the best lecture all quarter in class. I really enjoyed it and learned alot, however you didnt say how much energy is hitting the earths surface per area? how much is hitting per square meter
So, people think about this wikipedia calls it spaced based solar power,
but because I thought of it on my own, I get to change the name
help me come up with something cool like, "Matt's Space to Earth Solar Panel Energy Beam"
