[ExI] More Thoughts on Space based solar power (alternatives)

[Mike Dougherty]

On Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 12:34 AM, hkhenson <hkhenson at rogers.com> wrote:
> If this were average instead of peak for a few hours mid day, cheap thin
> film solar cells would be the answer.  But that's not the case.  There would
> be huge swings in available power.  It would take some interesting source
> controls on individual inverters for the power companies to deal with the
> generation swings or there would have to be huge upgrades in transmission
> lines.

If average daily consumption is half of peak production, would it be
worth putting instantaneous surplus into the grid (with the
collection/transmission issues you mentioned) or more economical to
sink that directly to batteries for supplemental power as production
declines?  We would only be supplying the grid when all local*
batteries had been topped off and we really had nothing better to do
with the energy (That's a problem we would like to have, eh?)

* "local" could also take new meaning if my surplus power simply goes
to my neighbor's house (with proper energy credit coming back to me)
The grid might become a production/consumption web (much like WWW),
but that simply furthers your point about how power distribution must
change proportionally to the production changes.