For California Homes, Clean Power From Space

In early December 2009, California Public Utilities Commission approved an ambitious project to beam solar energy from space to generate electricity starting in June 2016.

Under the terms of the contract between Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) and Solaren Corporation, PG&E will buy 850 gigawatt hours (GWh) for the first year of the term, and 1,700 GWh per year over the remaining years. The cost of the electricity is competitive with land-based renewable energy sources.

Solaren consists of a number of aerospace engineers, it is a start-up company nearly a decade old with headquarters located in Manhattan Beach and Los Angeles County, California.

The Solaren project will provide baseload power from a space-based technology that collects solar energy as it travels in a geosynchronous orbit and converts the energy into radio frequency (RF) power for transmission to a receiving station located in Fresno County, Ca. The RF power will then be converted to renewable electricity for delivery to the power grid. Generating enough electricity to power tens of thousands of homes.

Solaren’s engineers have designed a relatively lightweight system around a Mylar mirror that’s 1 kilometer (0.62 mile) in diameter to concentrate light onto the solar panels. They have been working with United Launch Alliance (a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and The Boeing Company) to launch four or five heavy-lift rockets containing the solar power systems.

The company plans to run pilot tests before an actual launch. Then once in geosynchronous orbit, a series of SSP (space solar power) pilot plant system tests will validate the satellites, ground receiver station functions and verify performance, safety and key parameters to ensure successful operations.

Will the radio wave transmission technology used to carry energy from space to Earth work? It should, during a four-month experiment in 2008 a former NASA scientist and his team transmitted solar power over a distance of 92 miles between two Hawaiian islands.

A solar energy system in orbit could provide a clean, reliable source of solar power that avoids the interruptions of cloudy days and bad weather on Earth.

You just gotta love California! They are not afraid to look a challenge in the eye and bet on the future with their aggressive renewable energy goals. How bout the rest of you 49 states?

…. as the green future unfolds.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 at 11:39 pm and is filed under Everything Solar, go green, science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.