Japan Planning $21bn Solar Power Station in Space. By Yvonne Chan, BusinessGreen, September 1, 2009. "Japan is developing a giant solar power space generator that it expects to begin transmitting solar energy to earth from an orbit 36,000km above the earth's within the next 30 years. The $21bn government-backed project includes plans for the construction of a solar space station comprising four square kilometres of solar panels with a total capacity of 1GW - enough to supply about 294,000 homes in Tokyo, according to a statement posted on the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry web site. Over the next four years, the project will focus on developing technology that will send the electricity generated by the orbiting solar panels back to Earth in the form of microwaves. In 2015, the government plans to launch a small satellite fitted with solar panels, which will be used to test the effectiveness with which the technology can beam electricity from space through the ionosphere -- the outermost layer of Earth's atmosphere. The station is expected to be fully operational in the 2030s... Advocates of space solar projects point out that solar energy at the edge of the Earth's atmosphere is estimated to be 10 times greater than on the surface, as there is no atmospheric or cloud interference. Much of the technology required to transmit the energy to Earth is also based on existing satellite systems."
2009-09-06
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