Space-Based Solar Power? PG&E Says Yes as Long as There's No Money Down

By Jeff St. John

Can a Southern California company deliver on its promise to have satellites collecting solar power and beaming 200 megawatts of it to earth in the form of microwaves by 2016?

California utility Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PCG) is willing to buy it, so long as it doesn’t have to put any money down.

That’s the gist of a proposed power purchase agreement announced Monday between PG&E and Solaren Corp., a Manhattan Beach, Calif.-based company founded in 2001 to deliver on a concept first popularized by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in the 1940s.

Under the terms of the agreement PG&E is asking state regulators to approve, the utility will buy the power only if Solaren can deliver it, and has no other financial stake in the project, utility spokesman Jonathan Marshall said Monday.

While Marshall wouldn’t discuss further details of the contract, he did say that the prices PG&E has agreed to pay Solaren for the power are “comparable to what the California Public Utility Commission has approved on other recent renewable energy deals.”

Solaren, for its part, told PG&E in an online interview that its team of long-time NASA and aerospace industry professionals have the knowledge to make it happen.

According to a 2007 report from the Defense Department’s National Security Space Office, space-based solar power is feasible. Whether Solaren has the financial backing and regulatory support for such a novel concept remains to be seen.

CEO Gary Spirnak, a former U.S. Air Force spacecraft project engineer and director of advanced digital applications at Boeing Satellite Systems, told PG&E in an online interview that the scheme will use existing technologies for launching satellites and beaming energy to earth, albeit on a larger scale.

The idea is to put satellites in space that convert solar energy to electricity that will power devices known as solid state power amplifiers, Spirnak told PG&E in an online interview. Those devices convert electricity to radio frequency energy, which will be beamed to a receiver station in California’s Fresno County where it will be reconverted to electricity, he said.

That receiver station will have no more environmental impact than a typical photovoltaic solar power plant, and because it won’t need water will have less impact than a coal, natural gas or nuclear power plant, Spirnak told PG&E.

Space-based solar power also will provide “baseload” power not linked to the rising and setting of the sun, he said. The company intends to deliver power that is “competitive both in terms of performance and cost with other sources of baseload power generation,” he added.

As for the danger of microwave beams from space going astray and burning up the countryside, PG&E referred to a NASA scientist’s paper that made the point that such a space beam carries less energy than sunlight, or about 3 percent of the energy of a typical microwave oven — not enough to boil anyone’s blood.

Also, microwave radiation doesn’t strip away electrons from atoms or molecules, which is the characteristic that makes gamma waves and x-rays dangerous to living organisms, the scientist wrote.

As for fudging on the 2016 timeline, Spirnak wasn’t having it.

“We are required under this PPA to deliver the contracted 200 MW of baseload power on the contracted start date to PG&E, and Solaren is committed to making that date,” he told PG&E.

Calvin Boerman, Solaren’s director of energy services, told Dow Jones Newswires that the company is funded with seed money from Sprinak and other unnamed investors, and is actively seeking more funding.

Comments

[Cuzilla]

Asimov was noted for his science FICTION! Just how much per kilowatt hour do they project the cost to be?

2009 Apr 14 08:58 AM

[Road Runner]

By 2016, solar on rooftops will be at or below grid parity. Plus the overnight energy storage issue will be solved. The focus will be on how fast enough product can be manufactured and installed to meet demand, and not on exotic ideas for energy generation. Then this idea of a space-based solar satellite will be of very limited value.

Maybe the idea will survive for places that get very limited sunshine like Canada, Russia, Scandinavia, etc. But, by 2016 in those places, wind power, coupled with good energy storage technology, will become very cost effective.

People who don’t believe this usually don’t understand how fast solar technologies are evolving. The pace is very fast in every area from basic solar cell chemistry to manufacturing scale and processes.

2009 Apr 14 10:22 AM

[Butch]

"By 2016, solar on rooftops will be at or below grid parity."

Yes. But only because carbon taxes will have raised the cost of most conventional sources, not because solar plus storage costs have come down to the cost of conventional sources today.

2009 Apr 14 11:05 AM

[Zenfar]

Many of the same factors that lowered the cost of computing will the lower the cost of solar, I have to agree with Road Runner and carbon taxes will not be needed to get there IMHO.

2009 Apr 14 11:42 AM

[Longinvestor]

Solar energy from the sun is already electromagnetic radiation. It is already being "beamed" to earth. Microwaves are electromagnetic radiation. Beaming energy to earth using microwaves has no advantage over what the sun is already doing. Hold onto your wallet for this one, IMHO.

2009 Apr 14 02:42 PM

[Road Runner]

Butch, You are one of the people I talked about in my previous post - you don't know how fast solar power is evolving. Zenfar is right on. Could you imagine 7 years ago that you could buy a powerful laptop computer for $400? The same laws are being applied to solar.

A good way for you to learn this is follow SunPower's (SPWRA) goals for reducing cost. You can read about them on their website or by doing a search. Their goals are very ambitious. They intend to cut total solar system costs in half between 2007 and 2012, only 5 years.

2009 Apr 14 03:10 PM

[colindgrant]

I'm not sure all the commentors actually read the article. PG&E has simply agreed to buy power from Solaren in 2016, at prices "comparable to what the California Public Utility Commission has approved on other recent renewable energy deals.”

If Solaren succeeds, then PG&E will have yet another source of renewable power, if they don't, no harm to anybody else.

As far as how fast solar technology is evolving - as an investor or a tech nerd, that's great! As a consumer, why should I care? What matters to me are: price, reliability, and (possibly) environmental impact. Let's let photovoltaics stand on their own merits.

2009 Apr 14 04:07 PM