Figure 11.5 Staged Plan for ISPO Financing In the same time frame an experiment of beaming through the Earth atmosphere would be advisable to develop the knowledge in that area and reduce risks of the next step of the program. This can be done on quite a small scale, for instance the Arecibo Earth to space demonstration as described in Chapter 10. Demonstration 2 Some 40 kW of power will be beamed from sun synchronous orbit to a remote location for Demonstration 2, typically providing at a 100 minutes interval 10 kW of power average for a 7 minutes time span to each location. Duration of this experiment is 2 years, and the yearly revenues are $4600 at $0.22 /kWh for each location serviced. In case of servicing Antarctica, the value of $0.58 /kWh is applicable, giving yearly revenues of $12,000. Project costs are budgeted at $800 million, but in order to reduce direct costs the platform could be shared with other smaller payloads. This next step of the staged plan is to support the concept of solar power from space and to show that tangible benefits can be generated to humans by using space solar power, both direct benefits in the form of providing a safe and reliable energy source, and more indirect benefits as the substantially lower impact on the environment than conventional energy resources. It will also show technical performance and limitations of beamed power. From a business point of view, this step would demonstrate the market for this kind of power generation, and give confidence that the Space Solar Power Program is worthwhile to pursue. First business application The next step is to go to a size that delivers some substantial revenues, and a size of 1 MW is regarded as lower limit for this. Chapter 10 describes a suitable design example. One megawatt of power will be delivered to Earth for several years, typically 10, and since this application does not use a geosynchronous orbit, power delivery is at 12 hours interval for 6 hours 24 minutes per day. It is assumed that this satellite can deliver power during morning and evening peak loads as to maximize the revenues. At a price of $0.10 /kWh the yearly income is about $230,000, with a total revenue over its lifetime of $2.3 million; the cost of design and development (including first unit) are estimated at $2.5 billion. The yearly revenues could mainly be used to demonstrate that the business as organization works well, and the generated cash can give some return on the initial investment. Intermediate business application As a step towards the large scale gigawatt size power satellites an intermediate size typically of 500 MW delivered to the grid is proposed. Lifetime should be 15 years. If a similar orbit is selected for
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