Space-Based Solar Array

California utility bets on space-based solar power: "By 2016 the Solaren power station is to be lofted into geosynchronous orbit and begin collecting 200 megawatts of sunlight under a 15-year contract with San Francisco-based PG&E. The solar energy will be converted into radio frequency waves and beamed to a ground station in Fresno to be transformed back into electricity and fed into PG&E’s grid...

... The sun never sets in space and if Solaren technology works—and that’s a Star Wars-sized if—space-based solar could supply electricity 24/7 to just about anywhere in the world, including regions without access to abundant sources of renewable energy. A 2007 study by the Pentagon’s National Security Space Office found that just a one-kilometer-wide band of space in earth orbit receives enough solar energy in just one year nearly equal to “the amount of energy contained within all known recoverable conventional oil reserves on Earth today.”...

Posted in: alternate energy,solar