Energy Production and the Largest Machines

The largest machines built are for power generation. Dams, wind farms, and solar farms work as single machines to generate gigawatts of energy. They use 10's to 100's of square kilometers to collect energy. Then they distill it into electricity carried to users on wires that are 10's of square centimeters across. The ratio of collection areas to transmission area is huge.

For example, the largest dam is Three Gorges. It uses more than 100 acres of reservoir for every GW produced. [1] The largest wind farm in the US is the Alta Wind Energy Center it uses about the same amount of land per GW, roughly 100 square km. [2] Even in the desert, the largest solar farm, Aldhafra, requires almost 35 square kilometers per GW. [3] These are all huge machines.

Generating renewable energy is really not that much different than what is done in mining ore. A ton of ore may only yield a few grams of gold or other precious minerals. [4] The key to success and profitability is mining where the ore is richest.

For renewable energy, the largest and richest energy source is above the atmosphere and out of the shadow of the earth. In orbit, the sunlight is almost 30% more intense and is available 24/7. In the dead of winter, under clouds and with short days, the solar energy in orbit can be more than 50 time more intense than on the ground. Collecting sunlight it in orbit and distilling it into beams of power that is transferred to the ground can use as little as 2 square km per GW. This is one to two orders of magnitude better than terrestrial renewables. By building these large energy collection machines in space, the entire business of generating renewable energy changes and can scale far beyond what we can do on Earth. Space based solar power (SBSP) can produce power 24 hours a day, 7 days a week using less resources than the alternatives. It is the logical next step for renewables.