Iceland looking to add space solar power to its sources of renewable energy by 2030

By comparison, the International Space Station, the largest object ever built in space, is 109 metres end-to-end

The British aerospace company Space Solar, in a collaboration with the private climate sustainability company Transition Labs, based in Iceland, have announced an agreement with Reykjavik Energy to build the world's first operational space solar power plant.

The idea is not new. Space-based solar power has been a concept since the beginning of the Space Age and the list of companies hoping to bring it to life is long. All of them are promising abundant clean energy from the sun but none have brought the concept to full scale.

The appeal is the availability of sunlight in space, where satellites in the proper orbit can be exposed to the sun 24/7, providing reliable energy no matter what the conditions are like on Earth.

By comparison, the International Space Station, the largest object ever built in space, is 109 metres end-to-end — the size of a football field including the end zones — and weighs 400 tonnes. Space Solar's proposed satellites would be 15 times bigger than the space station and they would need four of them in a constellation for their smaller early systems.

Space Solar says it believes the game changer that will bring costs down is the reusable SpaceX Starship, the world's most powerful rocket that will be capable of lifting 150 tonnes to low-Earth orbit once it's operational.