IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/energy/v36y2011i4p1986-1995.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Solar orbital power: Sustainability analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Zidanšek, Aleksander
  • Ambrožič, Milan
  • Milfelner, Maja
  • Blinc, Robert
  • Lior, Noam

Abstract

Solar power plants positioned in space for terrestrial electricity use have been proposed due to the ever-rising world energy consumption and its environmental impacts. This idea is analysed here in the context of sustainability of such power generation. To that end we have performed some new economic, environmental and social effects analysis of electricity generation by solar space power plants of both photovoltaic and solar thermal types power using the best currently available technology. The plants in the analysis were assumed to be in different Earth orbits, or on the Moon built by a robotised factory. One of our results is that both economically and environmentally the best scenario may be to launch a thermal solar power plant to the geostationary orbit from the Moon. Electricity produced in this way could be economically competitive to that generated by fossil fuels on Earth already for as few as 100 space power plants of about 5–10 GW each. This option is also deemed socially responsible with its capacity to reduce poverty with large amounts of cheap clean energy, and environmentally friendly, because it produces more than a hundred times less emissions than the same amount of electricity produced from fossil fuels on Earth.

Suggested Citation

  • Zidanšek, Aleksander & Ambrožič, Milan & Milfelner, Maja & Blinc, Robert & Lior, Noam, 2011. "Solar orbital power: Sustainability analysis," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 1986-1995.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:36:y:2011:i:4:p:1986-1995
    DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2010.10.030
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544210005931
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.energy.2010.10.030?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Loren M. Solnick, 1980. "The Employment Impact of Changing Energy Prices," Eastern Economic Journal, Eastern Economic Association, vol. 6(2), pages 87-98, April.
    2. Rebut, P.H., 1993. "Perspectives on nuclear fusion," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 18(10), pages 1023-1031.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hu, Dinghua & Li, Mengmeng & Li, Qiang, 2021. "A solar thermal storage power generation system based on lunar in-situ resources utilization: modeling and analysis," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 223(C).
    2. Wijewardane, S. & Goswami, Yogi, 2012. "Exergy of partially coherent thermal radiation," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 497-502.
    3. Lior, Noam, 2012. "Sustainable energy development (May 2011) with some game-changers," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 3-18.
    4. Lior, Noam, 2012. "Sustainable energy development: The present (2011) situation and possible paths to the future," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 174-191.
    5. Ren, Zhipeng & Li, Deyou & Li, Zhipeng & Wang, Hongjie & Liu, Jintao & Qu, Zhen & Li, Yong, 2024. "Spatial-temporal evolution mechanism of mass transfer under synergetic gaseous and vapour cavitating effects in a micropump," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 286(C).
    6. Toro, Claudia & Lior, Noam, 2017. "Analysis and comparison of solar-heat driven Stirling, Brayton and Rankine cycles for space power generation," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 549-564.
    7. Primož Jozič & Aleksander Zidanšek & Robert Repnik, 2020. "Fuel Conservation for Launch Vehicles: Falcon Heavy Case Study," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(3), pages 1-10, February.
    8. Liu, Yiwei & Shen, Tianrun & Lv, Xiaochen & Zhang, Guang & Wang, Chao & Gu, Junping & Zhang, Xian & Wang, Qinggong & Chen, Xiong & Quan, Xiaojun & Yao, Wei, 2023. "Investigation on a lunar energy storage and conversion system based on the in-situ resources utilization," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 268(C).
    9. Alonso, J. & Batlles, F.J., 2014. "Short and medium-term cloudiness forecasting using remote sensing techniques and sky camera imagery," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 890-897.
    10. Lior, Noam, 2013. "Mirrors in the sky: Status, sustainability, and some supporting materials experiments," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 18(C), pages 401-415.
    11. Alonso, J. & Batlles, F.J. & López, G. & Ternero, A., 2014. "Sky camera imagery processing based on a sky classification using radiometric data," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 599-608.
    12. Escrig, H. & Batlles, F.J. & Alonso, J. & Baena, F.M. & Bosch, J.L. & Salbidegoitia, I.B. & Burgaleta, J.I., 2013. "Cloud detection, classification and motion estimation using geostationary satellite imagery for cloud cover forecast," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 853-859.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sevillano, M.G. & Garrido, I. & Garrido, A.J., 2011. "Control-oriented Automatic System for Transport Analysis (ASTRA)-Matlab integration for Tokamaks," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 36(5), pages 2812-2819.
    2. Mohammad Reza, Alizadeh Pahlavani & Ali, Mohammadpour Hossine, 2010. "An optimized SVPWM switching strategy for three-level NPC VSI and a novel switching strategy for three-level two-quadrant chopper to stabilize the voltage of capacitors," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 35(12), pages 4917-4931.
    3. Mohammad Reza, Alizadeh Pahlavani & Hossine Ali, Mohammadpour & Abbas, Shoulaie, 2010. "Voltage stabilization of VSI SMES capacitors and voltage sag compensation by SMES using novel switching strategies," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 35(8), pages 3131-3142.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:36:y:2011:i:4:p:1986-1995. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/energy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.