Power Platforms

Photovoltaic(PV) power plant platforms that solve all of the current problems of PV electricity generation:
  • Cost: today's PV is expensive and needs the support of substantial subsidies to make it affordable.
  • Intermittency: Clouds and bad weather can block sunlight for periods from seconds to weeks. This requires expensive backup fossil fuel generation capacity.
  • Night Time: There is no electricity storage solution that can provide cost competitive night time electricity today.
  • Geography: Solar energy is abundant in deserts where there are no people and scarce where people are. Exploiting deserts means using expensive long distance electricity transmission.
LOW COST
LOW COST
SUSTAINABLE
SUSTAINABLE
ZERO-CARBON
ZERO-CARBON
ENERGY SECURITY
ENERGY SECURITY
  • Because they cost the same as ground PV but produce three times the electricity, StratoSolar power plants provide low-cost, sustainable, zero-carbon electricity from a combination of solar energy and gravity energy storage. 
  • The power plants are a complete, lower cost replacement for base-load and dispatchable electricity generation from coal and natural gas. 
  • They need no additional backup generation, electricity storage or electricity grid changes . 
  • They offer enormous environmental and energy security benefits over fossil fuels. 
  • They can scale from small MW scale plants for islands, remote locations and/or developing countries to very large multi-GigaWatt scale plants positioned near large urban areas. 
  • They can eventually meet the complete world energy demand using only clean, safe, sustainable solar energy without stressing available land or natural resources.

Communications Platform

A communications platform that can provide internet access to the "other 3 Billion" who don't have it.
There are 2.8B people without Internet access in Asia alone, far more than all current internet users. They represent the future growth of the internet, but providing them internet access means solving several problems:
  • Infrastructure: There is little or no existing internet infrastructure, a solution must be self sufficient and provide routing, switching and internet backbone as well as access.
  • Cost: Incomes are very low, an internet solution must be low cost to subscribers
  • Density: The population density is high. This means a solution needs to provide a lot of bandwidth per square km.
StratoSolar communications platform solution:
  • Low platform cost, $2M to $4M depending on equipment, $1/month subscriber cost
  • Multiple (greater than 100) spot beam coverage over an area exceeding 15,000km2 provides total bandwidth exceeding 1Tb/s
  • Rapid deployment in days, No Infrastructure needed
  • Internet backbone connection via reliable, weather-free, high bandwidth, point to point links, between platforms up to 300 km apart and/or between platforms and low earth orbit satellites using:
  1. High frequency microwave wireless links
  2. Free Space Optical links using Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing
  • Or single mode fiber optic communications links down the tethers where backbone infrastructure is available near the platform.

Communications platform features:
  1. Large payload > 10 Tonnes
  2. Large area for antenna > 30,000m2
  3. Large 24/7/365/30 PV/gravity storage power > 10kW-100kW
  4. Permanent (30 years), fixed position in the sky at 20km altitude
  5. Platform can use standard 19” rack data center equipment
StratoSolar