Space-Based Solar Power Could Reach the Grid by 2028

The artificial intelligence energy crisis is catalyzing the development pipeline for space-based solar energy. As the world rushes to build up more energy production capacity in a scramble to keep up with skyrocketing demand from data center hyperscalers, the public and private sectors alike are increasingly adopting an all-of-the-above approach to energy investing, including next-gen and emerging technologies like putting solar panels into space, where they can access sunlight 24 hours a day.The idea is this: by putting solar panels into orbit, the sun will never set on them, thereby solving the biggest problem associated with solar energy – its intermittency. The energy captured by those solar satellites would then be beamed back down to Earth through the use of powerful lasers or through microwave beams, depending on the technology being applied.Space-based solar is not a new idea; scientists have been working on developing a logistically and commercially feasible model for decades now. But with the new influx of interest and investing dollars coming from the tech sector, it might finally be time for that vision to become a reality. A small but growing group of startups think that they will be able to begin operations in just a handful of years.Set OilPrice.com as a preferred source in Google here.One of those startups is Virginia’s Overview Energy. The company, which is setting up operations in one of the states struggling the most intensely with energy price hikes driven by sprawling data center campuses, thinks that it could beam solar power to the grid all the way from space as early as January 2028. “We really believe that we are able to provide utility-scale power with this technology,” co-CEO Darko Filipi recently told the Washington Post. And that’s not all. Filipi estimates that his company alone could supply one-fourth of the country’s energy demand growth over the next decade.The four-year-old startup inked a deal with Meta earlier this year, agreeing to provide up to 1 gigawatt of space solar energy to the tech giant. That’s about as much as the output of a nuclear reactor. However, that agreement is based on a technology that still hasn’t been tested in a real-world setting. And even if the technology does get off the ground (so to speak) even the most optimistic of projections say that space-based solar won’t become cost competitive before the year 2040.Other outlooks are far less rosy. “The technology may work,” Amory Lovins, a Stanford physicist and co-founder of the energy think tank RMI, told the Washington Post. “But I have serious doubts the economics do.” Lovins pointed to the many other forms of clean, abundant, proven, and even round-the-clock power options – such as nuclear and geothermal energies – that can produce electricity much more cheaply.So why are we throwing so many resources into space-based solar power, especially when you consider that solar photovoltaics here on Earth is already the cheapest form of energy that there is? One of the most critical factors is competition over scarce land resources. Finding viable tracts of land for utility-scale solar developments has proven increasingly difficult, as pushback against massive renewable projects have gained traction in many rural areas.“Utility-scale solar and wind farms require at least ten times as much space per unit of power as coal- or natural gas–fired power plants, including the land used to produce and transport the fossil fuels,” states a 2022 insight report from strategy & management consulting firm McKinsey & Company. “Wind turbines are often placed half a mile apart, while large solar farms span thousands of acres.”Putting solar panels in space would therefore solve this issue of, well, space. This context makes the promise of companies like Overview Energy extremely attractive to developers. The company claims that it could meet a quarter of new energy demand in the United States without needing to do any new construction on land.Plus, solar panels in space would be dispatchable, as solar satellites can reach enormous portions of the planet. A given satellite would be able to beam energy straight to the grids where it is needed most, when it is needed most. This ability to switch between grids and nations in real time would be a game-changer for energy security.By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.comMore Top Reads From Oilprice.comLNG Tankers Push Through Hormuz Again as Qatar, UAE Fight Supply CrunchINEOS Opens EU's First Full-Scale Carbon Storage Site in DenmarkIndia’s Clean Energy Boom Halts Coal Power Growth