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Nice to dream about solar arrays possible if you had the budget of NASA, so here you can see one of the 4 solar blankets which are attached to the trusses the space shuttle has been transporting and installing to the International Space Station.
When fully deployed in space, the active area of the eight wings, each 107 by 38-feet, will encompass an area of 32,528-sq. ft., and will provide power to the ISS for 15 years.
The SARJ, 10.5 ft in diameter and 40 inches long, will maintain the solar arrays in an optimal orientation to the sun while the entire space station orbits the Earth once every 90 minutes. Drive motors in the SARJ will move the arrays through 360 degrees of motion at four degrees per minute. The joints must rotate the arrays smoothly without imparting vibrations to the laboratories and habitation modules on the station that would impact microgravity-processing activities. At the same time, 60 kW of power at 160 volts and multiple data channels are carried across each joint by copper “roll rings” contained within. (Taken from this Lockheed Martin press release)
Wow... and with no clouds to get in the way thats pretty much guaranteed! If needed they could just skip the night cycle and stay at 12 noon all the time too [:D]
While it seems NASA has not yet determined a use for this new energy capacity, the enterprising russians have already been devising their plans for the next truss segment : the casino module!
Image from fundacion.telefonica
I think their plan is for us to build and shuttle the module up there and they will taxi the rich american clients and then they will give a 'cut' to pay for their share of the operating funds. COOL! [<:o)] Also they can now jump start their Soyuz rocket if they forget to turn the headlights off.
All kidding aside I'm sure the 60KW will allow them to expand the ISS to support many other modules and experiments in the future... although probably not this conceptual casino module [;)]