[jstummbillig]

> Anyway, even if it proves useful for something, it would join the long list of innovations doing one thing at the expense of everyone else (externality == light pollution in this case).

That's a strange reading. What would keep the benefits from cheaper electricity from diffusing to roughly everyone, as they usually do?

[blaze33]

I guess you can have both positive and negative externalities.

I went back to re-read reflectorbital.com, indeed if you're only lighting a solar farm in the middle of nowhere maybe the light pollution is not so bad outside of the targeted zone.

Still fells like a complicated solution to me. Imo we need more storage innovation and investment, a lot more. We know we'll have more and more intermittent renewables electricity production, we just have to store it.

[jstummbillig]

Oh, absolutely. The space mirror idea might be a net terrible idea; more panels and better batteries could simply be it.

I just don't see why, if this turns out to work, the benefits would not diffuse (principally because I don't see a line of previous innovations where this was not the case, electricity being a prime example of an extremely potent and well diffused commodity).

[blaze33]

If it works it could reduce the electricity price in the evenings and mornings.

Now if I take the french grid example that I know best, for the past 7 days the usual spot price is around 100 to 150€/MWh but between 9am to 6 pm it is greatly reduced due to solar production, frequently down to 0 like today (current heatwave, lots of sun). And today between 1 and 3pm we had up to 5GW of solar production being curtailed. That is on top of the nuclear plants already reducing their output by up to 8GW around noon to accommodate solar power. Hydraulic storage was also running but tops at ~3GW.

That is to say there's already unused energy during the day, in theory, if you had a MWh battery you could have charged it for free today (sometimes even been paid to do so) and earned 100€ a few hours later.

One thing I see coming (albeit slowly) is EV cars phasing out IC engines, that once plugged on the grid with their big batteries could be a good distributed storage solution: they recharge during the day whenever the price is low and smooth out the expensive peaks when possible.