Breakthrough coming? Iceland could get solar power from space in 2030

British startup plans to supply solar power from space to Icelanders by 2030, in what could be the world's first demonstration of this novel renewable energy source. 

The space solar power project, announced on Monday (Oct. 21), is a partnership between U.K.-based Space Solar, Reykjavik Energy and Icelandic sustainability initiative Transition Labs. 

It intends to launch a demonstrator satellite by 2030, which will beam to Earth 30 megawatts of clean energy — enough to power about 3,000 homes.

The power-beaming satellite will weigh 70.5 tons (64 metric tons), be about 1,312 feet (400 meters) wide (including its solar arrays) and circle the planet in medium Earth orbit, a near-space region at altitudes between 1,241 miles and 22,000 miles (2,000 and 36,000 kilometers). 

Related: Can space-based solar power really work? Here are the pros and cons.

By 2036, the partners want to build a fleet of six such space-based solar power stations, capable of supplying gigawatts of clean electricity to users on Earth 24/7 regardless of weather. By the mid-2040s, Space Solar's orbiting power plants could be delivering over 15 gigawatts of energy.     

Space Solar said the development and manufacturing of the pilot plant will cost $800 million. The system will provide electricity at about one-quarter the cost of nuclear power, at $2.25 billion per gigawatt, the company added, making it competitive with Earth-based renewable sources. Unlike photovoltaics and wind turbines on Earth's surface, the orbiting power stations will not suffer from intermittency — a major drawback of conventional renewable power generation. They will produce electricity constantly, regardless of the time of day or weather conditions. 

"Space-based solar power offers unparalleled benefits with competitive energy costs and 24/7 availability,' Martin Soltau, Space Solar's co-CEO, said in an emailed statement. "Reykjavik Energy's recognition of the potential for space-based solar to drive the energy transition is exciting, and we're thrilled to be working together in partnership toward a sustainable future."

Each of the 30-megawatt solar farms will be delivered to orbit by a single launch of SpaceX's Starship megarocket, Space Solar envisions.

With a capacity to lift up to 165 tons (150 metric tons) of payload into low Earth orbit, Starship is poised to revolutionize humankind's use of space by driving down launch cost, the major hurdle for the deployment of large-scale space infrastructure such as orbiting solar power stations.

The project partners are currently scouting for locations to build ground-based receiving antennas that would collect the energy beamed down in the form of high-frequency radio waves and convert it into electricity to be fed into the power grid.

Space Solar's power plants are built from modular core building blocks that could be assembled to create solar power harvesters of different sizes. The giant satellites can orbit at different altitudes and provide power to multiple countries at the same time, the company said.

Until recently, space-based solar power was considered utter science fiction due to the enormous sizes required to produce usable amounts of power and the high cost of launching such vast assemblies into space. The arrival of SpaceX's Starship and advances in space robotics, however, have brought the dream closer to reality. 

A number of countries, including Japan and China, plan to launch space-based solar power demonstrators in the coming years and develop fully fledged orbiting power stations within the next two decades. In February, U.S. startup Virtus Solis announced plans to launch a space-based solar power demonstrator in 2027. That project, too, will rely on SpaceX's Starship to get off the ground, and will provide about 1 megawatt to users on Earth.