Powering the Orbital Ring

More about Perovskites

In my last blog post, I explored perovskites, emphasizing how this remarkable class of materials underpins innovations ranging from solar cells to superconductors. They are tunable crystalline frameworks that can be engineered to exhibit almost any desired optical or electronic property.

Perovskites are redefining both solar power and superconductivity. Their progress, from 30% tandem cells in 2022 to 40% graphene hybrids in 2025, points toward a future where the orbital ring can power itself while also feeding energy back to Earth.

“The U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) supports research and development projects that increase the efficiency and lifetime of hybrid organic-inorganic perovskite solar cells, speeding the commercialization of perovskite solar technologies and decreasing manufacturing costs.“

“What are Perovskite Solar Cells? Halide perovskites are a family of materials that have shown potential for high performance and low production costs in solar cells. The name “perovskite” comes from the nickname for their crystal structure, although other types of non-halide perovskites (such as oxides and nitrides) are utilized in other energy technologies, such as fuel cells and catalysts. Perovskite solar cells have shown remarkable progress in recent years with rapid increases in efficiency, from reports of about 3% in 2009 to over 25% today. While perovskite solar cells have become highly efficient in a very short time, a number of challenges remain before they can become a competitive commercial technology.” (June 1, 2022). 

In this follow-up article, we’ll look at how these same materials could one day power one of humanity’s most ambitious megastructures, the orbital ring.

A Self-Powered Megastructure

One of the more surprising conclusions in Orbital Ring Engineering is that the ring can power itself, even during its deployment phase, when it’s not yet connected to the ground.

“The orbital ring could be built with a deployment time from 0.5 to 1 year without needing any external power. After deployment, it would be able to send its excess power back to the ground via its CNT (carbon nanotube) anchor lines.”

– Orbital Ring Engineering, p. 366

Once fully operational, the ring becomes net power positive. It can not only sustain its own linear-induction motors (LIMs) but also supply additional energy for mass-driver sleds or export power to Earth through its conductive CNT anchor lines.

Each segment of the orbital ring is lined with solar panels that receive the Sun’s full 1,361 W/m² of irradiance at Earth’s orbit, about 30 percent more than on the ground, since there’s no atmospheric absorption, scattering, or weather to reduce intensity. Because the orbital ring is ground-synchronous, every point on it experiences the same day–night cycle as the surface below, but with a key advantage: at roughly 250 km altitude, the local horizon is depressed by about 15 degrees, allowing each section to see the Sun for up to two hours longer than ground level. Geometrically, that means as much as 14 hours of daylight near the equator.

In practice, the effective “full-sun” collection time depends on how the panels are mounted. A fixed array aimed at the noon-time Sun would collect the equivalent of about 8–9 hours of full sunlight per day. Adding single – or dual-axis tracking increases that to roughly 10–12 hours, since the panels can follow the Sun across the sky without heavy cosine losses.

That’s close to the practical limit, as panels tilted toward low-angle sunlight eventually begin to shade one another. Designers typically restrict the minimum Sun angle to around 8–12 degrees above the horizon to keep structures compact and avoid self-shadowing.

Solar Panels in Space

In the Orbital Ring Engineering book, I assumed that by the time the first orbital ring is built, perhaps two centuries from now, multi-junction solar panels would reach about 45 percent efficiency, with lightweight thin-film arrays extending roughly 100 meters from each side of the ring.

“A 19-meter-wide solar panel array would cover a LIM site and meet all of its power needs if we spread the array over 450 meters per site… leaving plenty of room for other components such as cryogenic radiators and orbital ring stations.”

– Orbital Ring Engineering, p. 365

That projection is aging well.

A Solar Magazine article from May 2022 reported that perovskite–silicon tandem solar cells had already surpassed 30 percent efficiency in laboratory tests and were rapidly closing the gap with the theoretical limit for silicon alone. These tandem designs stack a thin perovskite layer atop a silicon wafer so that each material absorbs a different portion of the spectrum, boosting overall efficiency.

Fast-forward to November 2025, and a video from Just Have a Think featured an Australian team achieving over 40% efficiency by incorporating a functionalized graphene layer. Graphene replaces expensive gold and silver contacts, increases conductivity, and enables roll-to-roll manufacturing, paving the way for flexible, ultralight solar sheets.

Researchers are also experimenting with gallium-arsenide (GaAs) interlayers and other III–V materials to push tandem and triple-junction perovskite devices even closer to the 45 percent goal I outlined.

When you look at this rate of progress – from 30% in 2022 to 40% in 2025 – it’s clear that the long-term assumption of 45 percent efficiency two centuries from now is not only plausible but perhaps conservative.

“Even though I am fairly certain that a multi-junction solar panel will achieve 45 percent efficiency in the next 50 years, it isn’t necessary. If the efficiency were only 35 percent, it could still function effectively.”

– Orbital Ring Engineering, p. 366

Power for the Day and Night Side

Because half of the ring orbits through Earth’s shadow at any given time, power distribution is a serious engineering challenge. The early analysis addressed this directly:

“Half of the ring is always on the nighttime side of the planet, so that part would need to receive power via microwave transmission unless the daytime side can also power the nighttime side.”

– Orbital Ring Engineering, p. 365

The solution lies in its superconducting transmission network. The same high-temperature superconductors (HTS) that drive the LIMs can double as lossless power lines, transferring energy around the ring with virtually zero resistance. The sunlit side can power the night side seamlessly; no microwave links required.

How Much Power Are We Talking About?

The energy potential of the orbital ring is enormous. Even the conservative configurations in Orbital Ring Engineering—the 6-turn and 9-turn designs – produce between 500 and 650 gigawatts (GW) of electrical power. Expanded solar wings, extending about 100 m from each side of the ring, could raise that figure to roughly 2 terawatts (TW).

“A reasonable amount of power production from the orbital ring is 500 GW, or 650 GW for the 9-turn build… Placing 100 m of arrays on each side of the ring could deliver about 2 TW of power.”

– Orbital Ring Engineering, p. 36

For comparison, the International Energy Agency (IEA) and International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) reported that total installed world generating capacity in 2024 was around 8–9 TW, of which 4.45 TW came from renewables.

Average global electricity generation – actual power produced – is about 3 TW continuous.

That means a single fully-built orbital ring could, in principle, supply a significant fraction of humanity’s present electrical demand, or function as a planetary-scale backup grid.

Scene of an extended solar array experiment (SAE) panel during the OAST-1 experiment. View was shot from the orbiter window by one of the STS 41-D crewmembers. September 2, 1984. [NASA public domain https://images.nasa.gov/details/41d-01-0021]

Powering the Night Side

Transmitting that power through the ring and down to Earth is another challenge, but high-temperature superconductors make it feasible.

“1 MV HVDC superconducting transmission lines have already been demonstrated.”
– Orbital Ring Engineering, p. 394

Modern HTS research has confirmed this. Experimental 1 MV HVDC cables using flux-pinned HTS tapes have been modelled and tested for stability under transient loads.

“At 1 MV and 4,000 A, we could manage with just 23 strands of HTS tape. This presents yet another unbelievable possibility using technology that has already been proven today!”
– Orbital Ring Engineering, p. 395

At cryogenic temperatures near liquid neon (≈ 27 K), these tapes can carry several thousand amperes each, enough to move hundreds of gigawatts around the ring without measurable loss.

From Perovskites to Superconductors

This brings the story full circle. The same class of perovskite materials that is breaking solar-cell efficiency records also defines many type II superconductors, such as YBa₂Cu₃O₇ (YBCO). Perovskite-based superconductors can sustain immense currents while remaining stable in high magnetic fields, which is exactly what’s required for the ring’s levitation, power transport, and fault-current-limiting systems.

In effect, the orbital ring is a machine built from perovskites at both extremes:

• Solar perovskites on the exterior, harvesting sunlight with record efficiency.
• Superconducting perovskites in its core, distributing energy without resistance.

Together they form a closed-loop, self-powering system, a megastructure driven by the same atomic architecture that now fuels laboratory breakthroughs on Earth.

Final Thoughts

If we can continue advancing these materials–lightweight perovskite photovoltaics, high-field type II superconductors, and flux-pinned HTS transmission lines – the idea of a self-sustaining orbital ring becomes less a flight of imagination and more a long-term engineering goal.

“The orbital ring doesn’t just connect the Earth to space, it is a true mass transit
system and global energy solution.”

As Arthur C. Clark once said about the space elevator idea: “We will build it 50 years after everyone stops laughing.”

I would put my money on within 200 years for the orbital ring. That’s the promise of Orbital Ring Engineering: physics you can build.