Japan unveiled earlier this week plans to build an orbital solar power station. The ambitious plan, costing approximately $21billion, will see a satellite launched into orbit, which will use photovoltaic technology (the same as that found on your calculator) to harness solar power and beam it back to Earth, providing enough electricity to power 294,000 homes over a 15 year lifecycle.
Hold on a minute. Let's break this down, shall we? This project is going to cost $21billion, which is going to power 294,000 homes. That's about $71,429 per home. Over a 15 year lifecycle, that works out at $4,762 a year, and that's nearly $400 a month. Who the hell spends that on electricity? And that's at cost!
Effectively, what we're saying here is that Japan are going to put into orbit a device capable of firing 1.21 jigawatts of electricity at the planet from space, at a cost that they can't possibly justify as being recoupable through their domestic electricity market (which is what they are claiming).
We're doomed.
