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.