davidhomfray.bsky.social
Part time EastOxford, part time futureBoy. MyPersonalViews. Respect all people everywhere without prejudice or borders, they are u after all. #CitizenOfNowhere. CTO and cofounder of SpaceSolar.co.uk #SpaceBasedSolarPower #SBSP
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We have demos for all the difficult bits now and with funding we want to launch our first proper in-space demonstrations in 3yrs and commercial power in 5yrs. We could deliver GW per year every year and make a massive contribution to the energy transition.
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I'm the CTO and cofounder of Space Solar, its why I was interested. I've been building new energy systems for 20yrs (I developed UKs fusion commercalisation programme &was eng in charge of JET). I think SBSP is a complete game changer for the species and the UK is a leader. We just need to be brave
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Thank you for this thread. Was there much talk about Space-Based Solar Power?
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🔊While in Harwell, the Committee also hosted two roundtables with space companies based in Harwell to hear their views.
Thank you to Spire, Astroscale, Space Solar, Open Cosmos, Magdrive, Satellite Applications Catapult and Oxford Space Systems for participating.
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Have been banging on bout this for over a 20yr, D-T is hard enough. Thought Stott paper back in 05 would put this to bed. This's a good overview of why it would be incredibly difficult plasma before having to dig up 1.2e5 tonnes of lunar rock to get 1kg of He3. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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I've played games since the zx spectrum
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We are working towards delivering 30MW first of a kind power plant in 5 years and GW power plant in 12
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We could also put our receivers over the top of terrestrial solar, collect solar during the day and then when the sun goes down we deliver power to the same land area.
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The economics look sound, and we have confirmed that with our latest design. www.fnc.co.uk/discover-fra...
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My global models never looked like we could provide energy equity before i saw others starting to discuss SBSP. We are really excited about it. Last year we proved the hard bit of it. news.sky.com/story/quest-...
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Several GW/yr capacity. But for being dispatchable each satellite sees a quarter of the globe and we can move the beam safely almost instantaneously so if your renewables are doing well we can move it to another country who isn't doing so well. We can follow 6pm around the globe topping up at dusk
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Bang on thiugh dispatchable is the critical need. It's why I moved to Space Based Solar Power. I know it might sound science fiction but it isn't. We just completed our baseline design & I am convinced that it can be built in time for net zero and the beauty of it is that it can be built at capacity
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You are quite right I used the term baseload but I actually mean firm power, deliver guaranteed power, this is needed for industry and dusk/dawn. The reason firm is so useful now is that the fluctuations of demand and production is quite bonkers now.
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Theres no silver bullet I'm afraid, the answer includes fission as well as renewables, energy efficiency, storage. Spent 20yrs working in fusion & now space based solar power cos I still think we're missing a baseload source. I think we can combat climate change but only if we do it all & do it now.
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Hi Allan, I'm not too aware of Australian politics but watch Juice as it's both informative and funny. it did appear to be more about the politics. I'm spending a lot of time at the moment worrying that people are starting to assume that renewables alone are the answer
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Cost of power is not just about installation cost it's about utility. As nuclear is firm power. It will be there at dawn and dusk, when it's overcast or too little or too much wind. We need really sensible conversations about the nuance of energy generation. It is not a polarised answer
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We need a broad, clean and pragmatic energy portfolio and although renewables will make up a significant percentage of that portfolio. It would be unwise to be solely reliant especially as climate change could significantly change wind speed or solar insolation.
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@thejuicemedia.bsky.social Really like the stuff you do. Having spent 2 decades working on new energy sources (including SBSP, fission & fusion) you've turned what I think is a good point into renewables being the silver bullet argument. Volumetrically, storage makes a renewable only approach hard.
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JET will always be one of the finest machines we as a species have ever built and it was a propoer honour being in charge of the old girl
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I regularly pushed towards 8-9kEV on JET for context
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But you are totally correct it's not a silver bullet. To meet Net Zero we are going to need fission, renewables, energy storage and efficiency. SBSP is an important piece of the jigsaw.
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I'm really excited about it, I've worked on new energy for 20 years (mostly fusion), SBSP will work and can be deployed in time
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We managed to solve the really tricky bit last yr, the ability to point wirelessly in any direction.
news.sky.com/story/quest-...
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The technology is here it just needs modifying we think you can get 30MW in 5 years and GWs/yr in 10 years. Many other countries think it can be done it that sort of time frame sustainabilitymag.com/articles/chi...
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It's has some fantastic features that supports the development of renewables you can move the beam across countries to support grid balancing and as it's low mass density and high volume manufacturing building blocks it's also sustainable. ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/739...
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Hi there, im developing SBSP, getting the PV closer to the source of the energy outside the atmosphere and day/night makes the economics very sound. Here is a good techno economic study done for UK gov www.fnc.co.uk/discover-fra...
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I worked on fusion for nearly 20yrs, it will work but can't see it adding lots of GW to combat climate change in the next 20years
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There are 2 main things that excite me about SBSP is that it's dispatchable, if your renewables are doing well, I'll beam to another country/continent. The other is that its more like mobile phones than energy generation it's about building millions of building blocks so incredible GW/yr installed