For Utilities, the Future Is Now

Generating power from the sun and burying carbon underground are two old concepts on the cusp of reality.

By Jim Ostroff, Associate Editor, The Kiplinger Letter

September 29, 2009

Note two exciting energy technology developments whose times have come: Space based power plants and a coal burning facility that emits no carbon dioxide. Both are likely to be key elements in helping electric utilities meet expected stringent U.S. emissions requirements without having to mothball a large number of existing coal fired power plants.

Power plants in space are no longer just a science fiction fantasy. In little more than six years, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) aims to supply enough power for 250,000 homes by tapping into an orbiting electricity generator.

The California utility has inked a deal with Solaren Corp. for 200 megawatts of electricity -- power to be generated by an orbiting solar cell plant and transmitted as microwaves to Fresno, where it’ll be converted to electricity.

Solaren, PowerSat, Space Energy and other firms working on orbital power are getting a lift from state laws requiring more use of renewable electricity sources. California’s power providers need to tap every nonfossil-fuel-made kilowatt of electricity they can find. PG&E, for example, is under the gun to boost renewables’ share of the electricity it sells from 14% now to 20% by 2013 and to 33% by 2020, says Jonathan Marshall, a company spokesman.

A coming federal mandate will also spur the space power race and expand the market for electricity beamed in from space. Congress is likely to enact a law within a year or so that will require all electric utilities to meet a 20% renewable power mandate by sometime in the 2020s.

Space based power has a luster unmatched by other renewables because around 95% of the sunlight captured by satellites’ solar panels can be converted into electricity. That’s about five times better than earth based solar cells and three times the efficiency of nuclear and coal powered electricity generating plants. Unlike today’s solar and wind power systems that are affected by day/night cycles and weather conditions, an orbital one can crank out electricity without interruption.

No new technological breakthroughs are needed to loft solar power plants into orbit and have them beam electricity to Earth. “Today’s communications satellites essentially do the same thing, but on a much smaller scale” than what’s being envisioned by Solaren, says Calvin Boerman, the company’s director of energy services.

The initial cost for Solaren’s system, including a launch vehicle, will be about $1 billion, and the company -- made up of aerospace and rocket industry veterans --are raising the money privately, with no investment dollars coming from PG&E, Boerman says. Start-up costs will come down as more orbiting power plants are built and launched into space.

Solaren and its competitors figure that they will have a steady customer in the Department of Defense (DoD), which wants to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels and find an alternative to transporting large portable diesel generators to supply power to forward bases in remote areas. DoD’s National Security Space Office has concluded that space based power is ready to become a reality, nearly 70 years after science fiction writer Isaac Asimov first proposed it.

Also in the pipeline: A coal burning plant that puts out no carbon dioxide. SCS Energy is developing a 750 megawatt New Jersey facility that will siphon off the gas and pipe it far offshore for entombment beneath the Atlantic Ocean. The SCS facility is about five years off and will likely be followed by others. They’ll be expensive -- with initial costs 50% higher than for a standard coal burning plant. But the value of carbon credits earned under a coming climate change law will help offset that. Meanwhile, American Electric Power has launched a one-year test to determine the feasibility of sequestering CO2 from a conventional coal fired generator at its plant in New Haven, W.Va.

Carbon capture and storage will give utilities new tools to meet progressively tougher CO2 emissions limits expected to kick in around the middle of the next decade. Power companies will use these plants to offset emissions from older coal fired generators that now produce more than 50% of all U.S. electricity.

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