RCS: Solar Space Power Plant (SCES)

Main articles:

• Solar Power (Global Market)
• Solar power (Russian market)

2022: Solar Space Power Plant Presentation

On January 5, 2022, the Russian Space Systems company (RKS, part of the Roscosmos State Corporation) announced that its specialists had completed work on the project of a promising solar space power plant (SKES). The development will ensure the regular supply of alternative electricity to hard-to-reach - island, mountain and northern - areas of the Earth, regardless of weather conditions and time of day, and will also allow the transfer of energy to other spacecraft - for "planned recharging" and in case of emergencies.

The SCES complex consists of two segments. The transmitting module is an unmanned spacecraft with an area of ​ ​ 70 m2, storing the energy of the Sun and transmitting it to Earth, and the receiving module is a system of ground-based mobile antennas (so-called rectennes) with batteries that receive solar energy from the spacecraft through a laser channel, convert into electricity and distribute to ground-based consumers. The ship can also serve as an orbital "charging station" - to transfer energy to third-party satellites for operational recharging. The space power plant is equipped with a control device that allows for balanced dispersion of energy, as well as a buffer for storing excess solar energy.

"The depletion of the Earth's natural resources poses the challenge of finding alternative sources of energy. In the atmosphere of our planet, the sun's rays disperse and almost completely lose their energy efficiency. However, in outer space, the efficiency of using solar energy exceeds tens of times. It can be converted into a laser beam and transmitted to Earth with minimal energy loss. That is, humanity can draw energy in unlimited quantities in space from a renewable source - the Sun. This development is an excellent alternative to thermonuclear power, " says research engineer of the department for the development of promising equipment of the RKS Maria Barkova.

SKES operates according to the scheme of separate energy accumulation - a special solar collector of the station receives solar radiation, and it is distributed in two directions. A smaller part, about 5%, goes to the "supply" battery, designed to power the SCES itself. The remaining 95% is transferred to a second storage battery designed to transmit energy to the Earth through a laser channel. The advantage of laser energy transmission is the short translation duration - from nanosecond, and extremely low beam divergence.

The SKES design also provides for a "solar energy storage buffer," which is used when the "supply" and "storage" batteries overflow: excess valuable energy is supplied to a special radiation generator, and then to the "buffer" battery for storage. Radiation generator consists of magnetron and optical quantum generator. In the bond, they produce laser and microwave radiation when an electron stream interacts with an electric field. This radiation is translated into a converter, which turns it into an electric current, which is accumulated in the "buffer" battery. At any time, by the control command, this "buffer" electric power can be put through the cyclotron converter to the ground rectenne by a laser.

It is assumed that such space power plants will be in solar-synchronous orbits with an inclination of 82 °, 90 ° and 98 °. Accurate guidance of the laser beam on mobile ground rectennes will be provided by a synchronizing software complex.