On the Feasibility of Using Space Solar Power for Load Chasing in an Electrical Power Grid

We investigated three U.S. cities with different cli-mates to assess the feasibility of load chasing with space solar power (SSP) systems. Because the time varying load is correlated with the temperature variations, there may be regions where the temperature variations over a year are small enough such that load chasing with an SSP system is feasible. To explore this, we used historical load data from each city to drive a simulation in which the SSP system was the base load supply and another where it was load chasing. We modeled two SSP concepts - one based on the Caltech Space Solar Power Project design and another that is more representative of previous concepts. We found that it is feasible for a SSP system to load chase in the sub-tropical and tropical regions as the annual temperature variations are small.