by Mark Ollig

Created on: December 02, 2009

Solar power may eventually be directly 'beamed' to earth.

Mr. Scott, can you beam a little sunshine onto the Enterprise's bridge please?

Yes, my Star Trek reference is cheesy, but I just couldn't help myself.

In reality, there is an active energy program being investigated for an earth-orbiting solar power-collecting satellite. The official name is called the Space Solar Power System (SSPS).

Simply put, the sun's electrical energy is collected from a space orbiting solar-satellite and is sent to the earth via wireless microwave transmissions.

From the concept pictures I viewed, focused radiated waves of energy are beamed from an earth orbiting solar-satellite to a ground based collector device. This collection device is actually floating on a platform in the water close to shore. From this device there are transmission wires attached which connects it to the electrical grid we use today for power distribution to our homes.

This solar-satellite powered program originates in Japan and has an estimated cost of $21 trillion yen, which is approximately $230 billion in US dollars.

It is thought that as we move away from our traditional fossil fuels as a power source, an orbiting solar power station in space may become necessary in order to provide a source of electricity in the future. This is according to the Kensuke Kanekiyo, from the Japanese Government's Institute of Energy Economics.

This SSPS satellite will be in a geosynchronous orbit 22,500 miles above the earth.

The SSPS will house a 2.5 square mile area of solar panels which is projected to generate a 1GW (Gigawatt) stream of electrical power. This amount of energy reportedly could power some 300,000 homes in Tokyo.

The Japanese METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry), along with 16 companies, including the Japanese engineering group, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (http://www.mhi.co.jp/en), are taking part in creating the technologies needed to send a stream of solar cell electricity to the earth.

I found much of my information about the SSPS for this column from the Japanese Unmanned Space Experiment Free Flyer (USEF) web site. Fortunately for me, there was a link which had some of the information available in English.

If any of my readers do read Japanese, here is the URL: http://www.usef.or.jp.

The SSPS working group examined an achievable configuration which consists of a large power solar generation and transmission satellite. The upper surface of this satellite is covered with solar cells and a rotating

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