Created: 2023-01-22
Updated: 2025-01-04
Company - Space Solar
Product/Service - CASSIOPeiA
- Classification
- Space Utilities
- Category
- Space Solar Power
Power Beaming
- Fields
- Wireless Power Transfer
- Status
- Development
- First launch
- 2029
- Solar Reflectors – The orientation of the satellites is sun pointing to constantly reflect sunlight onto the solar panel array below.
- Solar Panels and Transmitters – 60,000 layers of power modules collect the sunlight from the reflectors and convert this to high-frequency radio waves.
- Power Transmission – A coherent, collimated beam of radio waves is transmitted to a rectifying antenna on the ground.
The ‘rectenna’ is a large but sparse net-like structure holding the small dipoles which convert the microwave energy into electricity.
It is typically several kilometres in diameter, though the area is just 8% of a wind farm delivering equivalent energy output, and could be sited offshore adjacent to wind farms.
CASSIOPeiA – the market leading Solar Power Satellite design
Of the Solar Power Satellite concepts which can deliver 24/7 baseload power, the most capable is CASSIOPeiA. Conceived by the UK company IECL it has patented design features which offer strong economic and operational benefits, with a best-in-class specific power predicted to be 1 kW/kg.
This results in a low Levelised Cost of Electricity competitive with intermittent terrestrial renewables.
Space Solar Takes Major Step Forward with its CASSIOPeiA Concept, 2023-02-07
- The UK’s leading space-based solar power (SBSP) company, Space Solar, today announces the results of a detailed engineering design and analysis study which confirms the performance characteristics for its CASSIOPeiA Solar Power Satellite concept. The results are further supported by Space Solar’s ongoing wireless power beaming hardware test programme.
- The study, delivered in partnership with Frazer-Nash Consultancy, has further advanced Space Solar’s design, looking in detail at both ground and spacecraft systems.
- The CASSIOPeiA Solar Power Satellite design has already been shown to have strong differentiators compared with other concepts for SBSP, delivering continuous power, highly competitive economics and with the ability to operate in a range of different orbits to deliver affordable energy into global markets.
- This study has established the baseline design in critical areas of structure, thermal management, attitude and orbit control, photovoltaics and light path, with the performance and mass targets met.
- Initial findings from the company’s HARRIER wireless power transmission demonstrator have also fed into the study, and helped to optimise the design. Priority areas for development in the next stage are now confirmed.
As of 2024, the timeline plans are:
Breakthrough coming? Iceland could get solar power from space in 2030, Tereza Pultarova, 2024-10-24.
- The space solar power project, announced on Monday (Oct. 21), is a partnership between U.K.-based Space Solar, Reykjavik Energy and Icelandic sustainability initiative Transition Labs.
- It intends to launch a demonstrator satellite by 2030, which will beam to Earth 30 megawatts of clean energy — enough to power about 3,000 homes.
- The power-beaming satellite will weigh 70.5 tons (64 metric tons), be about 1,312 feet (400 meters) wide (including its solar arrays) and circle the planet in medium Earth orbit, a near-space region at altitudes between 1,241 miles and 22,000 miles (2,000 and 36,000 kilometers).
- By 2036, the partners want to build a fleet of six such space-based solar power stations, capable of supplying gigawatts of clean electricity to users on Earth 24/7 regardless of weather. By the mid-2040s, Space Solar's orbiting power plants could be delivering over 15 gigawatts of energy.
- Space Solar said the development and manufacturing of the pilot plant will cost $800 million. The system will provide electricity at about one-quarter the cost of nuclear power, at $2.25 billion per gigawatt, the company added, making it competitive with Earth-based renewable sources
- Each of the 30-megawatt solar farms will be delivered to orbit by a single launch of SpaceX's Starship megarocket, Space Solar envisions.
Status Comment / Notes
Planning a major demonstration of Megawatt scale power beamed from space by 2029.
News, Research, Projects and Patents
Title | Type | Date | Summary |
---|---|---|---|
Breakthrough coming? Iceland could get solar power from space in 2030 | Article | 2024-10-24 | |
Saudi Arabia’s NEOM plans solar power station in space | News | 2023-01-19 |