Reflect Orbital: sunlight at night, on-demand

reflectorbital.com

3 points·jjmaestro··5 comments

Reflect Orbital is developing a constellation of revolutionary satellites to sell sunlight to thousands of solar farms after dark.

One of the founders shared a video on Twitter showing a test they did with a balloon and a "mobile solar farm":

https://twitter.com/bennbuilds/status/1767961251186163857

This doesn't pass the smell test. For constant light the satellites would need to be in something like geosynchronous orbits, which is "very far away"(tm). Closer in and you'd need Starlink 2.0 quantities to get coverage.

Even then, the size of the orbiting reflector would need to be absolutely gargantuan to reflect enough sunlight to be useful.

> Even then, the size of the orbiting reflector would need to be absolutely gargantuan to reflect enough sunlight to be useful.

That assumes they try to do it with just one mirror, right? What if they have a system of multiple mirrors passing the sunlight from the sunny side?

At best, you'd still need at least a square meter of reflector for every square meter of target unless you were willing to accept significantly reduced output.

I'd definitely be willing to accept reduced output if the price was right. Less income is better than no income. This could significantly increase the value proposition of solar projects in northern areas.

Also, nowadays night time electricity is more expensive than sunshine peaks when solar is at full output: https://www.ote-cr.cz/en/short-term-markets/electricity/day-...

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