California gives green light to space solar power
California has given the green light to a deal involving [the sale of] energy beamed down from space. (...) A start-up company called Solaren is designing the satellites, which it says will use radio waves to beam energy down to a receiving station on Earth. The attraction of collecting solar power in space is the virtually uninterrupted sunshine available in geosynchronous orbit. Earth-based solar cells, by contrast, can only collect sunlight during daytime and when skies are clear. (...) But space-based solar power must grapple with the high cost per kilogram of launching things into space. (...) [To reduce those costs, Solaren claims it will be] using inflatable mirrors to focus sunlight on solar cells.