Comment on FCC grants approval for sun-reflecting space mirror that's been widely criticized by astronomers

• keepthepace@tarte.nuage-libre.fr ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  That sounds like the logical next step for the space industry. Intermittence is a big problem for PV installations, this partially solves it.

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  • jdnewmil@lemmy.ca ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Beside the obvious diurnal health impacts, solar PV doesn’t work well when shaded and relies quite a bit on diffuse light to keep the array producing during those edge of day times when it is economically hard to make the modules spread out enough to avoid direct sun shading. Pointing reflected beams from arbitrary directions in the sky turns out to be very likely to create unusual shade lines that will render the light nearly unusable by the panels.

    Then of course since they are planning to locate the reflectors in high-angular-velocity low earth orbit even if the angles are briefly conducive to power conversion it won’t last very long and then some fossil fuel generator is going to have to bobble their throttle to fill in the gaps… which is the worst possible scenario for using solar power (equal amounts of fossil generation as PV needed so no displacement).

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    • keepthepace@tarte.nuage-libre.fr ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      What do you mean by “shaded”?

      And I think the idea is to have several satellites taking turns at illuminating a given target. Your diesel generator (actually nuclear power plants where I live) will have to turn on anyway without these additional sources, but they lower the need.

      Until they reach the endgame of being able to produce continuous illumination all night long.

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