An EMB (a technical description of a flywheel) stores energy through spinning a composite flywheel with an electric motor that’s built in, driving the rotating mass to speed making the system into a battery. Then use the electricity by using the motor as a generator that slows the flywheel down.  EMBs aren’t quite dead, the once widely admired Beacon Power flywheel builder that’s in bankruptcy has found a buyer that may put the intellectual property back to work and return a chunk of a federal loan to the taxpayers.

Mr. Peart’s idea is quite futuristic. Aside from the problems of either lifting the whole thing into orbit or building a manufacturing system in orbit, the concept does overcome the twin drags on rotating masses, the friction of air and bearings blocking gravity’s effect.  Peart is suggesting the flywheel spin at speeds in excess of 60,000 RPM. The flywheels would float (through the use of magnets) in a frictionless vacuum chamber, removing almost all friction and drag.  That would enable the storage of energy for years on end.

Peart's Orbital ElectroMechanicalBattery Layout. Click image for the largest view.

Peart’s satellite would collect energy through an incorporated solar array.  Once the energy is stored the system would seem conventional with other ideas – the energy can be transferred through the use of a microwave antenna and then converted back into electricity through a rectenna (receiving antenna), located down on Earth. The antenna could be repositioned so to allow energy transfer to multiple reactenna locations on Earth, from a single position in orbit.

Peart's Solar Energy Collector and Storage Satellite. Click image for the largest view.

The idea has some thought in it; the satellite would incorporate a system of easy access doors to allow the servicing or removal of worn batteries. The batteries would be oriented on a circular plate that rotates allowing the removal of a set of batteries in a series. The batteries would be mounted with alternating clockwise and counter-clockwise rotations to balance out the gyroscopic effects.  That way two in pairs would speed up twisting opposite to each other leaving the satellite undisturbed.

Peart's Orbital Power Station EMB Service Door. Click image for the largest view.

The proposal has ten series mounted vertically in a column, and six columns are mounted in each individual satellite making a total of 360 batteries mounted in each satellite. The satellite images shown here are small-scale examples, full power satellites would contain several thousand batteries. Each battery would have capacity ratings about 25kWh.

An orbital power station offers the cleanest renewable energy storage and production so far imagined.  Such power station satellites would provide energy on a constant basis, and could answer demand at peak power consumption times with the stored energy.  Peart also points out orbital power stations can also be used as a practical means to sell power services worldwide.

The problem is going to be the capital investment.  Lifting simply a very large solar array is going to challenge the economics.  Adding in batteries at current orbital lift prices doesn’t seem practical for now.

Yet the concept has great stimulating value.  The Republican primary race has one candidate that sees the future of mankind returning to the solar system, which is for now a government sized job and one best done by the free people of earth instead of despots.

Almost everyone it seems has forgotten the root of the information age is the American effort to put a man on the moon. Without the research and development during the 1960s searching for small, lightweight and energy efficient devices, primarily integrated circuits, the information age we now know would not exist as we know it.  Societies have myopic views of the past; it will always be a challenge to avoid a myopic view of the future.

Peart’s concept has value, a measure of thought that can solve problems, worthy of note and keeping saved for those in the future who can build off planet.  Peart’s idea is part of that vision thing that is so painfully lacking in American political and economic discourse.

It’s a pity that virtually all political energy is devoted to cutting up the proceeds of the past, dividing up the production of the present and promising the potential of the future – without investing in the ideas that make future filled with possibilities, challenges and opportunity.  We’re missing that vision thing.

Space Based Solar Graphic Used By PG&E. Click image for the largest view.

PG&E has contracted to buy 1,700 gigawatt hours per year for 15 years from Solaren produced by the space-based solar arrays.  The arrays will have a generating capacity of 200 megawatts. While that’s smaller than a full scale nuclear or natural gas plant its enough to supply thousands of homes. The anticipated date of operation is amazingly, June of 2016.  That’s not so far out to see if the plan can be made to work.

Space-based solar is an idea that’s been around for decades, and that’s being pursued by companies and researchers around the world.  The key advantage over land-based solar or wind power is that space based solar can generate renewable energy around the clock.  Space based solar also could collect as much as 7 tiles more power per area unit as the collector isn’t blocked by the atmosphere.

Space based solar is as close to infinite energy and power production as man will get unless man’s fusion effort gets very good, well past breakeven.

Politically speaking, the California Public Utilities Commission gave the go-ahead to the project in an effort to meet the state’s aggressive renewable energy goals.  If Solaren can pull it off, California could really get to fully renewable power over time.

For consumers, a PG&E representative on Thursday said that the utility will only pay Solaren if it delivers the power adding the cost of the electricity is competitive with land-based renewable energy sources. It’s a vague, but hopeful comment.

The Solaren plan expects to use satellites equipped with solar photovoltaic panels and mirrors to generate the electricity, which in turn is transmitted via microwaves to a ground receiver station in Fresno County, Calif. The receiver then converts the microwave energy to electricity and then feed into the power grid.

Solaren is run by veterans from aerospace companies. The engineers have designed a relatively lightweight system around a Mylar mirror that’s 1 kilometer in diameter to concentrate light onto the solar panels to squeeze more electricity from them.  I wouldn’t count them out on the technology – what will matter is the price and profit, if the profit can be made.  In any case the lessons will be of enormous value.

Jonathan Marshall from PG&E said, “If this works, it would be a real game changer. But for our customers, there’s really no or little risk, so it’s worth supporting something that has credible people behind it with years of experience who think they can make it work,”

Solaren’s CEO Gary Spirnak said the company plans to run pilot tests before an actual launch, drawing on company employees’ experience in aerospace. Spirnak said, “Once in geosynchronous orbit, a series of SSP (space solar power) pilot plant system tests will validate the satellites and ground receive station functions and verify performance, safety and key parameters to ensure successful operations. When we complete these steps, we will then be ready to deliver power to PG&E in 2016,”

Space based power offers enormous hope and potential.  No fuel cost, no energy from earth sourced from plants, animals or people. One just has to get the equipment up there and make it work.

But for Solaren, success might be fleeting.  The opportunity to power civilization without earth inputs for the energy or fuel would be a revolution.  Solaren will be watched intensely, should they succeed, and it looks like the intellectual power is there, others will be sure to follow, and some will be better and even more efficient and costs might come down.

Lets wish Solaren success; they are the only true competition to compare with nuclear fission and fusion.  Let the fight get underway – the fight’s about construction costs – and driving that down where fuel costs are such small factors will benefit the economy in a fundamental way.  Cheap energy should be a political imperative.

Space Island Group plans to design, build and operate commercial space transportation systems and destinations that are dedicated to commerce, research, space solar power, satellite repair, manufacturing and tourism.  There project will incorporate technologies, vehicles and procedures developed by NASA and aerospace companies over the last 25 years to create a stand-alone, commercial space infrastructure supporting the broadest possible range of manned business activities in low earth orbit some 400 to 500 miles above Earth.

Space Island Group Orbital Power Station Concept. Click image for a larger view.

The idea is to provide services, training, ground and space operations, communications and launch facilities for commercial space traffic and space stations. These will be destinations where research and manufacturing facilities will coexist with plush resort hotels in orbit.  They plan for the first proof of concept solar station to be deployed in a low earth orbit of 300 miles in October of 2010, generating around 12-13 kilowatts.  The power will be transmitted via precisely tuned microwave frequencies, and will require “no fly zones” above the receiver area on earth.  There doesn’t seem to be any way to confirm the no fly zones are authorized, yet.

By 2012, Space Island Group intends to deploy a 1-gigawatt geosynchronous space solar station up around 22,300 miles, which will be constantly available on earth except during lunar eclipses of the solar station.  Sir Charles is considering new work being done by Mitsubishi in Japan for cell phone power, a wireless point-to-point energy transmission on earth that is said to be presently exceeding the efficiency of copper wire-based transmission.  I’m just going to have to see that publicly tested before allowing much credence.

Space Island Group is counting on hundreds of manufacturing companies from dozens of industries that have flown experiments onboard NASA’s space shuttles. The experiments found that when common elements were melted, mixed and solidified in the absence of gravity they often found new combinations with absolutely unique properties. Bio-scientists in particular were startled by the impact space-grown cells and crystals could have on the diseases and afflictions of Earth. But these firms were frustrated by NASA’s complete lack of “customer service” and incredibly high costs.

Space Island Group’s main and first element in their long term plan is space solar power satellites that over the next two decades, are asserting to deliver trillions of kilowatt-hours of environmentally clean electric energy to virtually any location on Earth. The second is mass-produced, economical launch vehicles able to carry space solar power satellite components up to geosynchronous orbit.

All this depends on New Mexico getting its now ground broken Spaceport up and running so that launchers such as Virgin Galactic, Up Aerospace and Lockheed Martin can function.  A quick look at the board of directors suggests that the local players and the New Mexico taxpayers may well get the spaceport up and running.

Spaceport America Terminal Concept. Click image for a larger view.

It all sounds rather dubious, but not so far fetched as the first impression might suggest.  The New Mexico effort to build a spaceport is real enough, Sir Charles Shults is well known enough, and Space Island Group might well have the drive to get to geosynchronous orbit with enough technology to compete with the various nuclear power generation possibilities. That’s leaving alone the realty that should the spaceport get built, Virgin Galactic and others might well have the competitive power to bleed down NASA, the European Space Agency and the Russians as well.  This isn’t including the other space based power contenders who will need lifting as well.  The spaceport looks like a very good idea.

Where does that leave us?  Encouraged for certain, dubious in practice, enthused in principle and concerned on cost.  Its going to be very cheap to generate thorium fueled fission power, the three potential fusion teams will come in at a low cost, and frankly if the Feds get off their duffs and fix the Nuclear Regulatory Commission even uranium fission could get much cheaper.  Orbital power is going to have to be very low cost.

Maybe there is some sense in cap and trade.  The crush of its costs to consumers and the devastation to the economy might well trigger a response that leads to more power cheaper.  Politicians are only so stupid and the press can’t stay so biased for Obama forever.  The mistakes and spending will get to real time awareness eventually.

Meanwhile the series of players, from a state driven spaceport to launcher companies, to orbiting producers and power generators, plus even cruises, looks pretty good – if difficult to sort through.  But over the coming months the various players will gain more notoriety and become more “singular” subjects.  But for now they’re all tied together – and I wish ‘em well. That’s a lot of the infrastructure potential to launch things and poeple into orbit.

This follows Solaren’s recently signed deal for the first-ever power purchase agreement to deliver 200 megawatts of solar energy from space with California’s Pacific Gas & Electric.

Meanwhile the Swiss company Space Energy is working toward the launch of a prototype satellite in the next 2 to 3 years.

Quickly reviewing, the idea is to use orbiting satellites, called powersats, to collect solar energy in space, many times more potent than the hottest brightest desert sun and beam it down to earth. Unlike the intermittent solar energy at the planet’s surface, an orbital power satellite is not interrupted by clouds and the night and they could provide virtually unlimited emissions free energy undiminished by atmosphere or cloud cover. Operating 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, an orbital satellite system would receive 20 to 25 times the energy of a similar-sized terrestrial solar power plant in theory, at the cost of a large hydroelectric power project.

Its being said that orbital power satellites can work reliably when composed of proven technologies using standard satellites, standard high capacity solar panels, electricity to radio wave converters and radio wave transmitters and receivers. The companies working in orbital power seem to agree a utility scale system should be deployable within the next decade. Here is PowerSat’s video on YouTube.

PowerSat Corp., a partner of PowerSat Limited in London and a subsidiary of PowerSat International in Gibraltar has filed U.S. Provisional Patent No. 61/177,565 for “Space Based Power Systems and Methods.”  The company, only founded in 2001, has obtained $3-to-$5 million in angel funding to begin the proof of concept process with a 10-kilowatt demonstration of wireless power transmission capability on Earth.  In the meantime it’s negotiating a first round of further venture financing in “the single-digit millions.”  Later hopes are to launch a $100 million, low-earth-orbit project by 2015 and then partner with a utility or government agency on a utility-scale project of 2.5 gigawatts, at a cost of $4-to-$5 billion, between 2019 and 2021.  This is cheaper than nukes or clean coal.

Orbital solar arrays have been in the imaginative mind since the 1960s.  Science has caught up with imagination; the plausibility has advanced theory into serious research.  It’s a risky place to invest billions of dollars because the power that is landed on the surface may not be enough to return a profit on the invested capital.

That makes the first of PowerSat’s breakthroughs of cost cutting technologies is called BrightStar important. It reduces the single big, array-carrying satellite into a cluster of hundreds of small satellites that work together with wireless electronic connectivity to broadcast a single beam to the earth receiving station, called a “rectenna.” BrightStar allows for launching sets of clusters in varying capacities. Those are joined into a more efficient system that is more reliable because a failure of a single unit or cluster does not mean the failure of the entire system and faulty individual elements can be replaced without causing down time or replacement of the whole system.  Sensible, pragmatic and getting serious in capital risk management now.

PowerSat's Brightstar. Click image for more.

PowerSat’s other cost saving concept is “Solar Power Orbital Transfer” a technology that uses the solar array’s electricity to power the satellite’s electronic thrusters. The thrusters boost the satellites from low earth orbit, 300-to-1,000 miles up to the geosynchronous earth orbit, 22,236 miles up. Using its own solar energy-generated electricity for the boost eliminates the need for an orbital vehicle, the extra fuel needed to lift the system to high orbit so cutting the weight of the launch by some estimated 67%, which dramatically decreases the cost.

It isn’t much of a stretch to consider using something such as SpaceX’s Falcon 9 lift vehicle. That would skip past the Fed’s and the NASA determined price to lift to orbit. The investment might well pan out, becoming the cash cow to end all cash cows if the things would stay operating with low cost maintenance over a long time.  The technology to drive to higher orbits alone may well prove worthwhile.

I’m not clear on the mathematic calculation behind PowerSat CEO William Maness comment, “This patent filing is a watershed moment not only for PowerSat but for a renewables industry that, until now, could neither compete economically nor generate power at the base load scale of oil or coal.  Today, the convergence of technology and energy demand, combined with the political will to wean us off of fossil fuels, enables space solar power to fill a widening clean energy supply gap.”  Just how pricey he expects the power to be might be cause for investor alarm, because by no means is the competition, government intervention or not, going to disappear without a price fight.

Pacific Gas and Electric the southern California utility asked California Public Utilities Commission last Friday for permission to buy 200 megawatts of electricity from Solaren’s orbiting power plant when and if it’s built, projected for 2016, a mere 7 years out.

PG&E spokesman Jonathan Marshall said, “We’re convinced it’s a very serious possibility that they can make this work. It’s staggering how much power is potentially available in space. And I say ‘potentially’ because a lot remains unknown about the cost and other details.” I dare say so, too.

Cal Boerman, Solaren’s director of energy services offers that many of the project’s details remain under wraps, and others haven’t been decided yet. For example it isn’t decided whether to use crystalline silicon solar cells or newer, thin-film cells that weigh less than silicon but aren’t as efficient. One would think in the first impression that whatever is lightest would be most cost effective, but the lifespan potential, yet to be learned, would have a major impact as well.

Gary Spirnak CEO of Solaren

Solaren is a young company whose website is single page with an email contact. One supposes that with the news getting out that might be best until things firm up. Solaren is based in Manhattan Beach, Calif., and is seeking investors for a private stock placement to raise “billions” of dollars for its business plan, said Gary Spirnak, CEO of Solaren to Cleantech Group. Cleantech is saying that Solaren is in talks with potential investors in Europe and the United States, and hopes to finalize investment agreements by the summer of 2009.

Solaren says it has a few million dollars in startup funding covering employees with backgrounds from the aerospace business. The company says it is in talks with companies such as Lockheed-Martin and Boeing to build the solar plant and the four rockets needed to send it into orbit.

Surprisingly the next step would be the engineering and design of the solar plant that would orbit in space, catch the sun’s rays and send them down to a ground station on Earth. One would think they have a better handle on that than the reports are saying. But CEO Gary Spirnak was a spacecraft project engineer in the U.S. Air Force and worked at Boeing Satellite Systems. The core team members at Solaren appear to reportedly have 20 to 45 years of experience in aerospace.

The deal is for Solaren to deploy a solar array into space to beam an average of 850 gigawatt hours (GWh) for the first year of the term, and 1,700 GWh per year over the remaining term, according to the PG&E filing to the California PUC. PG&E says there is no risk to PG&E ratepayers for this, which calls into question the viability of the plan. Are they a committed buyer or not? A sensible investor would want to know, and see it documented.

But lets not get skeptical; it’s the first contract (of some sort or other) for power from space, something NASA has still way back on the stove if thinking about it at all. Which might be a good thing, as the price for the power going the NASA route can’t even be imagined let alone contemplated as competitive.

There have to be significant problems that Solaren is representing as solved. Harvesting the energy in space is a known technology, it’s getting back down here that matters. The Cleantech report has it that the solar energy would be converted to radio frequencies to be beamed to earth. That’s based on citing U.S. government research efforts.

But the pluses are just intriguing, no clouds, no night, efficiencies skyrocket as the whole solar spectrum is available.

Yet the coolest feature from Cleantech is the comparison to the deployment of DirecTV, the satellite TV provider. DirecTV sends TV signals down to earth on solar-powered RF waves. However, when they reach the earth, the solar energy is wasted, and all receivers pick up is the TV programming. Also, the DirectTV signals are beamed across the whole country to all its subscribers, while with the Solaren service for PG&E, the signal would be tightly focused, aimed at a receiving station in Fresno, Calif. That makes feeling better about it possible.

PG&E also points to recent research done by the U.S. Department of Energy and NASA in the 1970s that shows the viability of solar from space. Additionally, the Pentagon’s National Security Space Office gave solar from space-based solar power high marks in a 2007 report saying “There is enormous potential for energy security, economic development, improved environmental stewardship … and overall national security for those nations who construct and possess a space based solar power [facility].”

This is really putting the pressure on naysayers. PG&E willing to spend the time and resources to consider and file for contracting permission is a distinct vote of confidence that has to help the progress. Moreover it will surely get the competition going as a space based power facility would be the nirvana of a cash machine until competition drives the margins low. That will take some time.

Big news. And a big idea. 1,000MW is no small facility. But the breakthrough is answering the first, most important question as Spirnak put it, “Investors always want to know, ‘How do you know people are going to buy the power from you?’”

Answered in the affirmative. Lets just hope it can get to less than 5¢ a KWh sooner than later. Then you’d have an economic boom going.

Hat Tipped with a bow to Brian Wang for catching this quickly at the nextbigfuture site.

And a firm acknowledgment of daring and leadership to Mr. Spirnak.

Space-based solar power, in which large satellite solar panels collect plentiful solar energy in orbit and beam it safely down to Earth, offer a full displacement of the fossil fuel, nuclear and biological sources of energy. It is the only energy technology that is clean, renewable, constant and capable of providing power to virtually any location on Earth. The Earth receives only one part in 2.3 billion parts of the Sun’s output, space solar power is by far the largest potential energy source available, dwarfing all others combined.

We all understand that wiring from orbit to the surface is not likely to be ever a practical way to bring concentrated solar power down for use. But Mankins discussed the latest test of a transmission method. The project demonstrated wireless power transmission between two Hawaiian Islands 148 kilometers apart, more than the distance from the surface of Earth to the boundary of space.

This time the machinery is real. It’s the first time that field deployed solar receivers coupled to power transmission and receivers were built and tested. Importantly, the test also gives a sense of the actual cost involved with producing such equipment. That means there is real data to replace the decades of speculation. Under $1 million in four months from start to test completed. Astonishing.

A Discovery Channel program was built on the test and aired Friday and again this past Sunday. I missed it and likely you did too. But the press conference Mr. Mankin gave Friday is on Google video. It’s more complete, more scientific than entertaining and gives Mr. Mankin an opportunity to discuss the details that we can see in stop, rewind and review mode:

Video Timeline:

0:00 – 14:20: Introduction with Mark Hopkins, NSS Senior Operating Officer.
14:20 – 17:40: Excerpt from Discovery Channel program Project Earth: Orbital Power Station.
17:40 – 18:50: Mark Hopkins introduces John Mankins.
18:50 – 50:10: John Mankins.
50:10 – 1:06:15: Questions and Answers.
1:06:15 – 1:10:55: Paul Rancatore.

I would suggest looking at the video especially from 18:50 to 50:10 for Mr. Mankin’s comments.

This is the first meaningful test to date. While lots of ideas, beautiful artist’s renderings and hopeful sounding writing has come before it’s quite a moment in history to see that the power transmitters and receivers were built, tested and they work.

Much as Dr. Robert Bussard’s talk on Google video was an important point in history that everyone can share, over time the significance of the Mankin test is important too.