Skip to content

Star Wars’ Death Star with PV modules could surpass global energy needs by 10 times

Share

From pv magazine global

The gigantic PV system that China plans to launch into orbit by the middle of the century is expected to provide several gigawatts of electricity, to be sent to the earth in the form of microwaves. By as early as the middle of the next decade, the Chinese want to test their technologies with a few megawatt-scale pilot plants in the stratosphere.

However, China’s ambitions could easily be achieved by the Galactic Empire of the Star Wars saga, according to new figures provided by EOn. The German utility has calculated the amount of solar power that the Death Star space station could theoretically generate.

With a diameter of 160 km, the huge, fictional spaceship offers 40,000 square km of surface area on which PV modules could be installed, if the empire were to use the side that faces the nearest sun. EOn has already removed the space that would be needed for maintenance and ventilation shafts, as well as the combat station’s defenses.

The company has concluded that solar modules with output of 171.4 MW per square km could be installed on the surface of the Death Star, to generate around 6.8 TW (6,800 GW). If the PV modules were facing the sun around the clock, the generated energy could supply 2.472 billion households with electricity, assuming annual consumption of 2,500 kWh.

But that’s not all. In “Return of the Jedi” the Death Star was expanded to 900 km in diameter. Under such conditions, it could potentially produce an astonishing 218,000 TWh of solar electricity, which would exceed Earth’s electricity needs by about 10 times.

EOn’s experts wisely recommended the use of all-black PV modules, in order to retain the original aesthetics of the Death Star.

By Ralph Diermann

This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.

Popular content

NSW transport service trains its sights on multiple 30 MW grid-scale batteries
01 November 2024 State government services and road agency Transport for NSW is investigating the deployment of multiple 30 MW grid-scale battery energy storage system...

Share

Leave a Reply

Please be mindful of our community standards.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.

Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.

You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.

Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.

This website uses cookies to anonymously count visitor numbers. To find out more, please see our Data Protection Policy.

The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.

Close