I know you aren’t serious, but I am now curious how much night time solar relaying it would take to pay off launching one of those satellites. I need to find numbers…
Edit-
Here it is- with updated math
Looking around I first needed to see how much energy generation nets. This is time and location dependant. I am in Texas. Out grid is run by ERCOT and they have their wholesale grid prices listed.
If I were to be buying reflected solar, it would obviously be at night, during the unfortunately lower priced off peak times. Looking at the grid avg we get about $40 per MWh.
But we now have the question of how big is the solar farm? And this size is now limited to the reflected beam size. According to reflect orbital their first satellite, Eärendil-1, has a beam diameter of approximately 5 square Km. But we have to factor in some beam dissipation near the edges, so let’s be safe and call it a circle with a diameter of 4 square Km of usable reflected solar. This number also easily convers to about 1000 acres of land.
Utility Scale solar farms output 1 MW per 5-10 acres. Of we took the middle (7.5 acres per MW) our hypothetical reflected beam sized solar farm would output 150 MW.
At $40 per MW and 150 MW we are generating $6000 per hour. And with our twilight window of 6 hours we can generate $36,000 per night.
But how much does the satellite cost? The rented cost is one thing, but only peasants rent the sun. We are talking about owning it. The satellite is Reported to cost $2 million. But the mass produced they are claiming will cost closer to $300k. Let’s pretend this becomes a viable buisness strategy to own these satellites and beam them to a reflected solar farm and use the $300k.
So our cheap satellite should take about 8.3 nights to pay off. The expensive one should take about 55.5 nights to pay off.
This also does not factor in lower luminosity, night time clouds, solar build cost, or launch cost. This is also factoring in today’s energy prices that continue to trend downward with the adoption of more renewables. This also ignores the giant issue of their orbital height only giving 4 minutes of sun per pass per satellite. I don’t even want to know how many centuries it would then take to pay off a $2 million satellite in 4 minute increments…
The 4 minute window is also a fun one. With the LEO altitude listed as between 600 and 650 Km, and if we call it 625 km, that gives it a period of about 96 minutes. This gives it 3.75 passes during out twilight window. But we don’t know when those windows will start or or end. As in, the first window might happen .5 hours onto twilight or the last window might be 1.5 hours before twilight ends, both scenarios wasting the remaining time, but we have a guaranteed 3 passes, and at least half the nights a bonus 4th pass either at the start or the end.
If each pass is 4 minutes, we get a total ‘illumination’ time of 14 minutes per night.
At $40/MW/hr we can also call it $0.6666/MW/min. Or, with out 150 MW farm this comes out to a clean $100/minute. And at 14 minutes per night we are making $1400.
To pay off the OG solar sat it will take about 1428.5 nights, or just under 4 years. To pay off the cheap sat it will take about 214.25 nights
Will these people ever stop taking their product names from The Lord of The Rings? J.R.R. Tolkien’s corpse could probably be set up to generate power from all the spinning he’s presumably doing in his grave at this point.
looking at it more plainly the satellite only has 18 m^2 reflective surface are so if it hypothetically could perfectly reflect it to earth it could at most add equalient of that in solar energy as harvested electricity that would mean at best added 3.6kW meaning at $40/MWH it would generate about $3.5/day so it would take 235 years to pay itself back, almost a millenia if it only helps 6h/day
I know you aren’t serious, but I am now curious how much night time solar relaying it would take to pay off launching one of those satellites. I need to find numbers…
Edit- Here it is- with updated math
Looking around I first needed to see how much energy generation nets. This is time and location dependant. I am in Texas. Out grid is run by ERCOT and they have their wholesale grid prices listed.
If I were to be buying reflected solar, it would obviously be at night, during the unfortunately lower priced off peak times. Looking at the grid avg we get about $40 per MWh.
But we now have the question of how big is the solar farm? And this size is now limited to the reflected beam size. According to reflect orbital their first satellite, Eärendil-1, has a beam diameter of approximately 5 square Km. But we have to factor in some beam dissipation near the edges, so let’s be safe and call it a circle with a diameter of 4 square Km of usable reflected solar. This number also easily convers to about 1000 acres of land.
Utility Scale solar farms output 1 MW per 5-10 acres. Of we took the middle (7.5 acres per MW) our hypothetical reflected beam sized solar farm would output 150 MW.
At $40 per MW and 150 MW we are generating $6000 per hour. And with our twilight window of 6 hours we can generate $36,000 per night.
But how much does the satellite cost? The rented cost is one thing, but only peasants rent the sun. We are talking about owning it. The satellite is Reported to cost $2 million. But the mass produced they are claiming will cost closer to $300k. Let’s pretend this becomes a viable buisness strategy to own these satellites and beam them to a reflected solar farm and use the $300k.
So our cheap satellite should take about 8.3 nights to pay off. The expensive one should take about 55.5 nights to pay off.
This also does not factor in lower luminosity, night time clouds, solar build cost, or launch cost. This is also factoring in today’s energy prices that continue to trend downward with the adoption of more renewables. This also ignores the giant issue of their orbital height only giving 4 minutes of sun per pass per satellite. I don’t even want to know how many centuries it would then take to pay off a $2 million satellite in 4 minute increments…
The 4 minute window is also a fun one. With the LEO altitude listed as between 600 and 650 Km, and if we call it 625 km, that gives it a period of about 96 minutes. This gives it 3.75 passes during out twilight window. But we don’t know when those windows will start or or end. As in, the first window might happen .5 hours onto twilight or the last window might be 1.5 hours before twilight ends, both scenarios wasting the remaining time, but we have a guaranteed 3 passes, and at least half the nights a bonus 4th pass either at the start or the end.
If each pass is 4 minutes, we get a total ‘illumination’ time of 14 minutes per night.
At $40/MW/hr we can also call it $0.6666/MW/min. Or, with out 150 MW farm this comes out to a clean $100/minute. And at 14 minutes per night we are making $1400.
To pay off the OG solar sat it will take about 1428.5 nights, or just under 4 years. To pay off the cheap sat it will take about 214.25 nights
Will these people ever stop taking their product names from The Lord of The Rings? J.R.R. Tolkien’s corpse could probably be set up to generate power from all the spinning he’s presumably doing in his grave at this point.
Wow, that’s awesome. I look forward to your math update (but I would understand if it doesn’t happen).
As an aside, I thought your comment deserved to be acknowledged on the !theydidthemath@mander.xyz community.
~If you don’t like it, you could always cover my house with extra midnight sunlight as punishment. 🤭~
looking at it more plainly the satellite only has 18 m^2 reflective surface are so if it hypothetically could perfectly reflect it to earth it could at most add equalient of that in solar energy as harvested electricity that would mean at best added 3.6kW meaning at $40/MWH it would generate about $3.5/day so it would take 235 years to pay itself back, almost a millenia if it only helps 6h/day