Shimizu Corporation, a Japanese architecture and engineering firm, has a plan to effectively turn the moon into a giant solar power plant, reports Inhabitat.

 

It proposes building a massive collection of solar panels (a "Luna Ring") 10,000 Km long by 20 km wide on the moon's surface. That's certainly a heavy-duty construction job for human beings, so Shimizu plans to get the work done with robots, only involving humans in supervisory roles.

 

Once complete, this hypothetical plant could continuously send energy to "receiving stations" around the globe by way of lasers and microwave transmission. This idea gets around two major hurdles for solar power, as there is no weather or darkness to curb electricity production on the moon. If operating in ship-shape, Shimizu says it could continuously send 13,000 terawatts of power back to Earth. By comparison, the total 2011 electricity generation in the United States was 4,100 terawatts.

 

Shimizu Corporation proposes the Luna Ring for the infinite coexistence of mankind and the Earth."