Solaren, Inc. is a

Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most populous urban a ...

startup corporation created to use solar energy for terrestrial electricity usage. In 2009, the company had a contract under negotiation with Pacific Gas and Electric Company of California to deliver 200

megawatts The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after James Wat ...

of power for at least 15 years, starting in 2016. The cost of the contracted activities has been reported as "slightly more" than California's projected energy cost in 2016 of 12.9 cents per kilowatt hour. As of 2014, the planned delivery date has been moved back to the end of the decade. Solaren plans to provide this electrical power to PG&E's customers from solar panels mounted on satellites placed in Earth's orbit. The satellite would convert this energy into

radio waves Radio waves are a type of electromagnetic radiation with the longest wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum, typically with frequencies of 300 gigahertz ( GHz) and below. At 300 GHz, the corresponding wavelength is 1 mm (s ...

and send it to a receiving station in

Fresno County, California Fresno County (), officially the County of Fresno, is a county located in the central portion of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 Census, the population was 1,008,654. The county seat is Fresno, the fifth-most populous city in Ca ...

. The plan is to provide 200 megawatts of continuous power, estimated as the average usage of 150,000 homes. If successful, this project would be the first implementation of space-based solar power (SBSP). The concept was first dreamed up in 1941 by

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

author Isaac Asimov in his short story "

Reason Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, ...

",Solarens plan from outer space
and was later described scientifically by

Peter Glaser Peter Edward Glaser (September 5, 1923 – May 29, 2014) was a Czechoslovakian-born American scientist and aerospace engineer. He served as Vice President, Advanced Technology (1985–94), was employed at Arthur D. Little, Inc., Cambridge, MA (19 ...

in 1968.

References

Solar energy companies of the United States {{US-energy-company-stub