Being an information harvester, you never know where it will take you.

This morning, I was reading a news clip on Energy Central's daily email blast, of energy news and learned about Pacific Gas & Electric's contract to buy solar power generated in space by a startup, Solaren Corp. The news was carried by Xinhua, the Chinese news agency, which picked up a report from the L.A. Times. Talk about circuitous!

In 10 seconds flat I located the CEO of Solaren, Gary Spirnak, and we chatted about his ideas. Doing them justice will require a full blown article in EnergyBiz - which is now on order - so keep reading the magazine. Basically, the idea is to launch supremely efficient solar panels - closing in on 50 percent efficiency, compared to the 8 percent of models launched in the 1970s. The energy will be beamed to earth - as communications satellites now beam radio waves to earth. If you are on an airplane that travels through the beam of power, it will not heat up much more than an airplane exposed to sunlight, Spirnak tells me.

The effort will cost $2 billion to create a test of a 200 megawatt project. It will run around the clock and need no uranium, no train loads of coal, no pipelines of natural gas. Just sunlight.. Pacific Gas & Electric has agreed to buy the power - at no risk, says spokesman Jonathan Marshall.

Next up, the plan calls for systems that generate 1,500 megawatts - the size of some of the largest power plants now in operation. The power can be dropped on a spot close to an urban center, obviating the need for expensive, unwanted massive transmission lines.

Marsha told me the project is written up on PG&E's blog NEXT100.com. This is where the information cloud really gets interesting. Marshall in his post reports how the solar effort in two weeks was mentioned on 26,000 Web sites.

New paradigms indeed. New sources of power. New ways of getting informed. "This is going to be a very significant source in the future," Sprinak said of solar power generation linked to earth receiving stations. Also - what about utilities becoming full-fledged information sources! Hats off to Marshall and his colleagues at PGE, whose site, self-described:

"... provides an in-depth look at the intersection of the clean energy business and the environment. Drawing on the collective experience of PG&E and insights from its readers, the blog is designed to encourage an open dialogue on the trends that will most impact the energy industry and our customers over the next 100 years--PG&E's second century in operation."

Interesting times. Newspapers fold. Blogs flower. And power rains down on us from space.