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Elon Musk is betting on the sun to power the US. Learn how a giant solar installation could transform sustainable energy and the future of energy
For Elon Musk, the energy demand of the entire US could be met without any problems with the help of a gigantic fusion reactor installed in the sky, directly above our heads. The good thing, according to the businessman, is that no crazy project needed not even a billion-dollar investment to achieve something like this: we have had one for billions of years and we call it the Sun. The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX calculates that a huge photovoltaic plant, approximately 160 x 160 km, would be enough to meet the energy demand of the United States.
That Musk likes flashy headlines and provocative ideas is nothing new, but in this case he is not the first to suggest an XXL-sized project with a futuristic approach to harnessing solar energy.
The mother of all installations
Elon Musk likes impactful phrases, and that's what he made clear recently during his participation in 'The Joe Rogan Experience', a podcast directed by commentator and comedian Joe Rogan, who in recent weeks has received a cast of guests as eclectic as the actors Dwayne Johnson “The Rock” and Whitney Cummings, former CIA agent Michael Baker, martial arts expert Tim Kennedy or writer Elliott West. Musk participated in the podcast on October 31 and, among other things, talked about the potential of solar energy.
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“In fact, it would be possible to power the entire United States with an area of solar energy measuring 100 miles by 100 miles,” explained the tycoon in statements recorded by Money Wise. Converted to our metric system, this would equate to an installation of about 160 x 160 miles. Musk's proposal is so outsized that upon hearing it, Rogan asked him to explain further: “So you could pick a dead spot, cover it with solar panels and charge the entire country?”
Plates, batteries and a gigantic solar energy reactor
"Absolutely. We need batteries, but yes”, replied Musk, who believes that putting such an idea into practice would not be difficult and sees how perfectly "viable" provide energy to the entire country with the help of the Sun: “This thing just works. We have a giant fusion reactor in the sky.” Your bet actually goes beyond words.
Investing in the solar energy industry
In 2016, Tesla purchased SolarCity, a company dedicated to the commercialization of solar energy generation systems, in an operation valued at around 2,6 billion dollars. “Tesla is preparing to commercialize its Powerwall and Powerpack energy storage products at scale,” explained Musk's company at the time, which shortly before had launched its own energy division: Tesla Energy Operations.
Musk's bet on photovoltaics is also not unique. The Solar Energy Industries Association and Wood Mackenzie recently estimated that this year the US solar industry will add 32 GW of production capacity, a 53% increase over 2022, and that by 2028 the country's operating capacity will be at 375 GW . Growth forecasts are also considerable in Europe.
Question of megaprojectiles
Musk is not the first to suggest an XXL-sized project with a futuristic philosophy to take the use of photovoltaic energy to a new level. In fact, there are already concrete initiatives that go far beyond the mogul's declaration in 'The Joe Rogan Experience'. One of them is led by the European Space Agency (ESA) itself.
For some time now, the intergovernmental agency has been toying with the idea of taking advantage of SBSP, an acronym in English for “space-based solar energy”, a strategy that would involve capturing solar energy with the help of huge satellites in geostationary orbit, which would then they would be in charge of converting it into low-density microwaves and transmitting it to receiving stations located on Earth.
Achieving something like this would, however, require facing “prohibitive challenges”, such as deploying huge receiving antennas, assembling large structures in space or studying the effect of low-power microwaves. For now, ESA has already launched the SOLARIS initiative to assess its feasibility.
In the focus of other agencies
ESA is not the only one that has dedicated time to analyzing the possibilities of SBSP. Its Japanese counterpart, JAXA, published a report outlining its advantages and challenges, and even suggested solutions. In the 90s, JAXA's predecessor participated in a conceptual design, the 2000-kW SPS10.000, and in the first decade of the XNUMXst century, the space agency and the Japanese government worked on another million-kilowatt SSPS concept.
China and NASA have also considered this possibility. Last year, Space News published that the American agency had started a study to evaluate the possibilities of SPS. “As technology evolves, system viability changes over time,” explained Nilokolai Joseph of NASA's Office of Technology, Policy and Strategy. With the new report, the agency wanted “assess the extent to which it should support the SPS.” Recently, research from the Universities of Surrey and Swansea concluded that it is feasible to create lightweight, low-cost panels to generate energy in space.
Large land installations
Not all solar megaprojectiles focus in space. Here on Earth, gigantic solar farms have been created with panels, like the deployment that China is promoting in Inner Mongolia, which includes a unique installation: 196.000 panels distributed over an area of 1,4 million square meters, making it the largest station of this type in a desert. Tesla itself has participated in large solar projects.
… and in theoretical studies
If there is an installation that dwarfs any of the solar farms built to date, or even that huge 160x160 kilometer strip of panels suggested by Musk to supply the USA, it is the Dyson Sphere, an idea launched in the 60s by physicist Freeman Dyson. His proposal: assemble a structure capable of surrounding the Sun.
Dyson believed that to continue evolving, there would come a time when a civilization would need to drastically improve its energy harvesting. And how to do this? With an installation capable of covering its star, in our case the Sun, with a “mesh” covered in panels or other technology that captures its potential.
