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Japan and JAXA, the country’s space administration, are trying to make it possible to beam solar power from space. In 2015, the country scored a breakthrough when JAXA scientists successfully beamed 1.8 kilowatts of power, enough energy to power an electric kettle, to a wireless receiver. Now, Japan is ready to bring the technology one step closer to reality.
A Japanese public-private partnership reports an attempt to beam solar power from space as early as 2025. The project, led by Professor Naoki Shinohara of Kyoto University, who has been working on space-based solar power since 2009, will attempt to deploy one. A series of small satellites in orbit. They would then try to beam the solar power the arrays collect to ground-based receiving stations hundreds of miles away.
The use of orbital solar panels and microwaves to transmit energy to Earth was first proposed in 1968. Since then, some countries, including the US, have spent time and money furthering the idea. The technology is attractive because orbital solar arrays represent a potentially limitless renewable energy supply. In space, solar panels can collect energy at any time of day, and the power they generate using microwaves, even with clouds, isn’t a concern. However, even if Japan does successfully deploy a set of orbiting solar arrays, the technology will be closer to science fiction than fact. That’s because producing an array that can generate 1 gigawatt of power—or about the output of a nuclear reactor—would cost about $7 billion with currently available technologies.
