Energy company US signs for solar energy from space

Energy supplier Pacific Gas & Electric has signed a contract with Solaren to receive solar energy from space in 2016. The energy is sent to a terrestrial distribution station via a radio-frequency link.

The California company Solaren has plans ready to send satellites into space that are intended to capture solar energy and send it to Earth. The satellites are equipped with large solar panels for this purpose. On Monday, the energy company Pacific Gas & Electric announced that it would contract with Solaren for the supply of solar energy from space from 2016. The contract provides for the supply of 200MW of electrical power from 2016, thus an interview with Solaren CEO Gary Spirnak in Next 100. This concerns base load power, so power that is supplied 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. To this end, the company says it will build the first space energy station. This should convert the solar energy into radio frequency energy, which will then be sent to receiving stations on Earth. Solaren points out that this technique is not new: satellites have been using it for decades, albeit for other purposes, to transmit data to Earth.

Solar panels would produce eight to ten times as much energy in space as on Earth, partly due to the lack of the filtering effect of the atmosphere and the fact that there are no seasons. Moreover, because Solaren’s satellites orbit the earth in a geosynchronous orbit, the sun shines on the solar cells 24 hours a day. Solaren points to a 2007 report from the US Department of Defense, which states that a kilometer-long band of solar satellites can harvest almost as much energy in a year as is present in all currently known oil wells.