this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2023
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In case of nuclear winter, I don't think renewable energy is going to be the main concern.
However, it is possible to put solar panels on satellites that transmit the energy down to the surface. It's costly and dangerous, but a benefit over surface solar is that the satellites can point at the sun for longer time during days and send the energy to places that are not in the sun, thereby producing solar power 24/7. It's wildly impractical and expensive, but in case of nuclear winter it may be a realistic solution.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power
Wouldn't the dust in the atmosphere also prevent energy transmission just as it does solar?
Wind, still works
You'd use frequencies that can penetrate cloud cover in that case, it wouldn't work otherwise because then it would still be subject to weather.
Some sort of orbital death beam? I seem to recall a 2000ad story around a space energy beaming facility that goes horribly wrong.
Oh sure, it sounds extremely dangerous, just like standing too close to a radar will poach your brain. The satellite beaming the energy back would have to stay on target and if it didn't it would need a quick and safe way to shut off. Of course dissipation of excess energy in a ground-based grid is a serious issue, so how you would design a satellite to deal with the sudden stop in energy flow is completely beyond me. Maybe you just write it off and launch another one in that case, and you have a lot of redundant paths rather than one critical one.
I don't know for sure but it's particulates that make it a nuclear winter, not just cloud (water) but would also need to penetrate the clouds as well.
It's probably not wise for me to Google "what frequencies of EM can penetrate a nuclear winter clouds" though 🙂
That's actually a pretty good point and I don't know how it would work either. It would definitely interfere with the signal to some extent.