What would it take to harness solar power from space then beam it down to earth? Money? Years? Super long cables? Solar panel maker Mitsubishi Electric Corp and IHI Corp would like to find out.

Mitsubishi Electric Corp and IHI Corp have agreed to work with several companies, to develop technology for a solar station in space. It will take about $21 billion to fund this Japanese project and about 20 years to try to make it happen.That is a lot of time and money.

The plan is to make it a 1-gigawatt solar station. The station will have 4 square kilometers of solar panels and it will be enough to power about "294,000 average Tokyo homes". They are considering launching their first mission in 2015 for testing.

One of the challenges right now of course is the cost. Transporting solar panels from earth to space will be costly. They have to figure out a way to cut the cost to make the solar station commercially viable, according to Hiroshi Yoshida the CEO of Excalibur KK. So, will it happen? Only time, technology and money will tell. What will a solar power station like this do for the world? What do you think? Will solar power from space be possible before or by 2030?

For more information on this solar power Japanese project take a look at the Bloomberg report here.

Via Ecogeek and Earth2Tech and Bloomberg