William Atkins
Wednesday, 15 April 2009 08:02
Science -
Energy
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California utility company PG&E announces that it will get clean, bright electricity from Solaren, which will grab sunlight from solar panels orbiting about the Earth.
According to the April 13, 2009 PG&E article “
Space Solar Power: The Next Frontier?”,
“As part of PG&E's commitment to providing more renewable energy to its customers, the utility has supported a wide range of technologies, including wind, geothermal, biomass, wave and tidal, and at least a half dozen types of solar thermal and photovoltaic power. Now PG&E is extending that approach to tap renewable energy at an entirely new level: solar power in space.”
PG&E, headquartered in San Francisco, California, has already agreed to purchase 200 megawatts of continuous power over a fifteen-year period from Solaren Corporation. Such a power amount would power about 150,000 average-sized homes.
However, before this contract can be carried out, PG&E must gain approval from the California State Legislature, through the California Public Utilities Commission. The price of the contract has not been announced.
Solaren Corporation, an eight-year-old start-up company based in southern California, consists of a number of aerospace engineers. The company’s headquarters is located in Manhattan Beach, Los Angeles County, California.
Solaren expects to launch four or five heavy-lift rockets containing the solar panels. The company has already talked with
United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and The
Boeing Company, about details and costs of such launches.
Official with Solaren hopes to begin its launches sometime before 2016. The satellite payloads will deploy the solar panels so they dock automatically together in orbit. The result would be an orbital power plant that weighs about 25 tons if back on Earth.
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