this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2025
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Solar panels in space could cut Europe's renewable energy needs by 80% (www.kcl.ac.uk)
submitted 23 hours ago by Pro@programming.dev to c/technology@lemmy.world
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cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/36081990

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[–] drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

This is an idea from the 1960s back when they thought solar panels would be like computer chips and remain super expensive in terms of area but become exponentially better at the amount of sunlight they could convert into electricity.

It makes absolutely zero sense to spend billions of dollars putting solar panels in space and beaming the power back to earth now that they are so cheap per unit area. The one thing you could argue a space based solar array could do would be to stretch out the day length so you need less storage, but that's easier to accomplish using long electrical cables.