[Server-sky] [ExI] Power sats again

Tue Jul 16 07:33:17 UTC 2013

> [....]  Here in the Pacific Northwest, power produced at
> times of low demand (say 2200 to 0600) can have negative value;
> the Bonneville Power Administration pays money to dispose of wind
> power produced at these times in resistors in the desert, to avoid
> spilling water over the dams and supernitrogenating the water,
> damaging the salmon.

Somebody should go out to that point in the desert and sneak in a more
valuable resistive load: obsolete Bitcoin mining rigs. ;-)

News to me: if I'm interpreting this correctly, it makes financial
sense to keep the blades turning and the generators engaged than to
simply stop the wind turbines, at times when hydro is the cheaper
source. I'm dumbfounded. Is this grounded in mechanical engineering,
subsidy policy, or perhaps a combination of the two? Maybe off-topic,
but perhaps not irrelevant to SSP reception.

Regards,
Michael Turner

Project Persephone
K-1 bldg 3F
7-2-6 Nishishinjuku
Shinjuku-ku Tokyo 160-0023
Tel: +81 (3) 6890-1140
Fax: +81 (3) 6890-1158
Mobile: +81 (90) 5203-8682
turner at projectpersephone.org
http://www.projectpersephone.org/

"Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward
together in the same direction." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

On Tue, Jul 16, 2013 at 12:57 AM, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> ----- Forwarded message from Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> -----
>
> Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2013 08:24:01 -0700
> From: Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com>
> To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> Subject: Re: [ExI] [Server-sky] Power sats again
> Reply-To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
>
> On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 5:00 AM,
> <extropy-chat-request at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> ----- Forwarded message from Keith Lofstrom <keithl at gate.kl-ic.com> -----
>
>>> From: Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com>
>
>> I would be interested in the assumptions that went into the power
>> revenue numbers.
>
> 5 cents per kWh declining to 2 cents per kWh over ten years.  These
> number are converted to capital cost at 80,000 times the cents per
> kWh.  That's ~equal to 6.8% discount over 20 years run though a
> levelized cost model.
> http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/electricity_generation.cfm
>
> The economic model doesn't sell electric power, it sells power
> satellites to utility companies.
>
>> The value of electrical power is highly dependent
>> on time of day.  Here in the Pacific Northwest, power produced at
>> times of low demand (say 2200 to 0600) can have negative value;
>> the Bonneville Power Administration pays money to dispose of wind
>> power produced at these times in resistors in the desert, to avoid
>> spilling water over the dams and supernitrogenating the water,
>> damaging the salmon.
>
> I should note that hydro is unlikely to ever be displaced by SBSP.
>
>> Time dispatchable power is very valuable, but the SBSP ground
>> rectenna systems must be able to receive power from power sats at
>> low elevation - long east-west dimensions.  Powersats near the
>> 0100 (1AM) position in their GEO orbits will be close to useless.
>> Rectennas under cloud cover (50% or more of the time) will get
>> an attenuated beam (with lots of unhealthy off-axis scattering).
>
> At 2.45 GHz, clouds don't cause much attenuation.  A heavy rainstorm
> will cause some loss.  As you go up in frequency these problems get
> worse.  Good point on the value of dispatchable power, but switching a
> power sat from one rectenna to another doesn't seem like a good idea.
> (Other than backup power sats being switched.)
>
> Given that electric power isn't even the biggest chunk of humanities
> energy needs, I think there will be an entirely different mode of
> managing the electrical grid.  Load management rather than generation
> management.  I.e., generate more power than the peak electrical grid
> load, and send everything above current demand to making hydrogen for
> synfuel production.
>
>> Converting space power to high value product before shipment from
>> orbit provides much more value.  Google search results generate
>> revenue of $20 per kilowatt-hour of electricity consumed, while
>> bulk off-peak power is worth less than $0.04 per kWh.
>
> Fascinating.  But for all of Google's size, it's not nearly as large
> as the energy market.
>
> The market for bulk power, especially if you can convert it to liquid
> fuels, is really large.  But it is also intensely price dependent.
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
> --
> Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
> ______________________________________________________________
> ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org
> AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B  47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5
> _______________________________________________
> Server-sky mailing list
> Server-sky at lists.server-sky.com
> http://lists.server-sky.com/mailman/listinfo/server-sky