Apr 27 2009

Solaren: The Media and Pundits Weigh In

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

In the two weeks since NEXT100 announced PG&E's first-of-a-kind deal to purchase space solar power from Solaren Corporation starting in 2016, the news has been reported, analyzed, debated, praised and ridiculed on more than 26,000 Web sites and other media, according to Google.

I've had time to review only about 0.1 percent of those sites, but several offered significant information, insights or opinions worth sharing.

Scientific American provided one of the most thorough analyses of space solar power and its prospects, including an interview with a co-founder of Space Energy, a Switzerland-based company in the same emerging market. The article quoted Frederick Best, director of the Center for Space Power (CSP) at Texas A&M University in College Station, Tex., as saying that space solar power "is a disruptive technology" that "could change the whole energy equation." 

The same article also shed light on Solaren's 2005 patent, which suggests how the company proposes to keep weight and launch costs down by doing away with structures to hold all the orbiting elements together. For other useful discussions of Solaren's design concept and patent, see Todd Woody's post at Grist, Michael Mecham's blog "On Space" hosted by Aviation Week and Space Technology, and the discussion on the HobbySpace site. 

A number of serious energy authorities applauded the concept while reserving judgment on the practicality of Solaren's plans to use satellites to capture solar energy, then send it via radio waves to an earth receiving station for conversion into electricity.

Ralph Cavanagh, head of the energy program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told the San Francisco Chronicle, "My prediction is this is going to be much more about economics than the environment." Utilities, he said, need to explore unconventional approaches to meet rising demand for energy while dealing with global warming. "You want to encourage them to try lots of different things," he said. "But the caution is that some of these things won't work."

Daniel Kammen, professor of energy and resources at the University of California, Berkeley, told the London Guardian: "The ground rules are looking kind of promising ... it is doable. Whether it is doable at a reasonable cost, we just don't know."

Solaren's CEO, Gary Spirnak, conceded his job won't be easy. Noting that the company would need "billions of dollars" in funding, he told Dow Jones News Wire, "We're under no illusions as to the difficulty of the task. . . . We understand how to work these things, but you have to put in the time, energy and engineering to make it work."

Green Wombat noted on the plus side that "there are no desert tortoises in space or other protected wildlife" that will stand in Solaren's way, though it will still have to "pass muster with a long list of state, federal and international government agencies." 

Earth2Tech's Katie Fehrenbacher wondered briefly if the announcement wasn't a belated April Fools' Day joke, but grudgingly admitted "it's not as crazy as it sounds." Still, she wondered if Solaren can overcome the "clear technical and economic hurdles" that have kept anyone from deploying a space solar installation to date.

Blogger Chris Nelder has no such doubts; he confidently pronounced the whole deal a "pure fantasy" that got his "blood boiling."

A more generous Sacramento Bee editorial called April 10--the day PG&E filed its contract for review by the California Public Utilities Commission--"the date when imagination docked with the Earthbound economics model in our backyard." The paper concluded, "Who can say whether those technical challenges can be overcome, and at what cost? For now, it's enough to celebrate the progress toward a day when clean energy is no longer an out-of-this-world idea but a reality, thanks to boundless imagination."

And the Daily Breeze in Torrance editorialized, "We're glad that companies are thinking outside the biosphere in the search for alternative energy . . . Orbital solar power stations should be part of the solution to give the United States true energy independence. We hope the state's utilities, entrepreneurs and the scientists and engineers who have driven the South Bay's aerospace industry will make this imaginative idea a reality in the decade ahead." 

© 2008 Pacific Gas and Electric Company. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms

"PG&E" refers to Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E Corporation.