Official News page 7

REAL LIFE NEWS: SOLAR ENERGY FROM SPACE

by Hazed

We don't really have an energy crisis. There's plenty of energy, all around us, from the wind and the tides and - most of all - the sun. The problem is that it's not in the right place at the right time. The crisis really is a storage problem. To paraphrase Robert Heinlein: it's raining soup, we just need a bucket.

One of the technologies that might give us the bucket we need sounds like it comes straight from science fiction: solar panel arrays in space that capture the sun's power and beam it back down to Earth. Now it may become a reality. Solar technology company SolarEn has struck an agreement with California's Pacific Gas and Electric company and the plan is to launch satellites laden with solar panels into orbit. If all goes to plan, power could be beamed down by 2016.

There's a whole host of problems involved, of course, not least the cost - it could take a few billion dollars to get this off the ground. There's also the problem of where to site the collectors that the solar satellites beam the power to. They can't be anywhere near habitation, because who would want to live near one in case the beam went off course? Still, it's an intriguing plan.

Fed2 Star index Previous issues Fed 2 home page