Orbital Solar Energy Stations

“Gentlemen, please step away from the bong!”

I kid you not. The March 2006 issue of Business 2.0 has got a story on the Space Island Group (SIG) and their ‘dramatic but realistic proposal‘ to build space-based solar energy fields. From an article at MarketWatch.com…

According to B20, early in the next decade SIG will begin placing huge, mile-wide sheets of solar cells in earth orbit. These NASA-designed structures, called solar power satellites, will convert sunlight into electricity, then use weak, pollution-free, environmentally safe microwave beams to send that energy down to simple antennas anywhere on Earth. The antennas will convert the beams back into electricity and feed it into standard existing power grids at an extremely low cost. The system will operate 24/7 overcoming the drawback of rooftop solar cells and windmills.

Yeah, I really like that one part there…”then use weak, pollution-free, environmentally safe microwave beams to send that energy down to simple antennas anywhere on Earth.” How does one weakly beam down gigawatts of energy?

Another choice quote from the article…”SIG’s target is to supply half the world’s electricity generation and distribution, currently a $2 trillion annual market.” Only half? Well that’s modest.

Here’s that article at MarketWatch.com.

[via Gristmill]