An intriguing announcement was made this week that Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), the utility that serves northern California including the SF Bay Area, has made a deal with an emerging energy company, Solaren, for providing solar energy transmitted from a satellite. An interview with Solaren CEO Gary Spirnak (who was a spacecraft project engineer in the U.S. Air Force and director of advanced digital applications at Boeing Satellite Systems) is also posted at PG&E's Next100 site. PG&E has wisely structured the deal so that they pay no money until power is delivered to their grid.
As this WSJ article points out, space solar power, which has been studied for several decades is a challenging prospect. Based on even the most optimistic previous studies, commercially produced space solar power by 2016 doesn't seem likely. However, Solaren's patent (which I've not had time to review in detail) indicates an innovative design based on inflatable components flying in formation, so it would be presumptuous to rule out their achieving this ambitious goal with existing launch technology.
Only time will tell how real this potential development is, but if it does pan out, it could be a major breakthrough for a new clean energy source and for development of spacefaring capabilities.
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