Electricity from space may light up Indian homes
Imagine a scenario where electricity is beamed down to you
straight from space. That too at a cost only slightly higher than what you pay
for conventional thermal power.
This could well be possible, going by the claims of the California-based
Space Island group, which has licensed American space agency NASA's solar
satellite technology. Space is currently busy wooing the Indian government to
participate in its audacious venture.
Said Pranav Mehta, Space Island group's operational director for India:
"We are talking to government agencies like Rural Electrification
Corporation and are hopeful that we will be able to put up the world's first
receiving station for solar satellite-generated power in India."
The technology is simple: All it takes is an array of satellite with solar
panels stretching up to five km, which gather the sun's energy and parcel it out
into small packets of micro waves which are beamed down to a receiving station
on Earth.
This station converts these energy packets into regular electromagnetic waves
that constitute electric power. The technology is already in use in NASA's space
vehicles.
If the Space Island group succeeds in selling the idea to the Indian
government and in its endeavour, the rural Indian landscape could be transformed
beyond recognition.
Said Mehta, "The technology is ideal for remote rural areas, where there
is no power grid network. All it takes is for us to beam down the micro-wave
signals to a receiving station from where a local distributor takes over and
distributes the power."
And the cost? "We will be selling power at 10 cents a unit (about Rs
4.50) until 2030 with a no-escalation clause," he said.
This is much less than the cost of solar energy in the country, which
averages at Rs 6-7 a unit. The company is planning to generate 100 Mw initially
(by 2012) and scale it up to 10,000 Mw by 2015, 25,000 Mw by 2020, and 100,000
MW by 2030.
Courtesy: http://www.rediff.com/money/2006/oct/11space.htm
