alt Hacker NewsMaybe I'm just out of the loop, but is solar substantially more efficient in space? I assume the satellites won't orbit in a way that follows the sun. And presumably the arrays of panels they can attach to a satellite don't exceed the size of the panels you could slap on and around a data center (at least without being insanely expensive).
Yeah the main benefits are:
1. solar is very efficient at generating energy, no moving parts, simple physics etc.
2. in space you don't deal with weather or daylight cycle, you can just point your panels at the sun and generate very stable energy, no batteries required
3. environmental factors are simpler, no earthquakes, security, weather. Main problem here is radiation
In theory its a very elegant way to convert energy to compute.