Japan and JAXA, the country’s space administration, have been making efforts to beam solar energy from space.
Earlier in 2015, JAXA scientists had successfully beamed 1.8 kilowatts of power, enough energy to power an electric kettle through a technology, and now it is poised to use the same technology.
As per a local report, a Japanese public-private partnership will attempt to beam solar energy from space as early as 2025. The project will try to deploy a series of small satellites in orbit.
These satellites will be used “to beam the solar energy the arrays collect to ground-based receiving stations hundreds of miles away.”
Using orbital solar panels and microwaves to send energy to Earth was first proposed in 1968. With this technology, orbital solar arrays represent a potentially unlimited renewable energy supply.
As per reports, solar panels can collect energy in space by using microwaves to beam the power they produce. The local report mentioned that “producing an array that can generate 1 gigawatt of power – or about the output of one nuclear reactor – would cost about $7 billion with currently available technologies.”
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