China is building facilities to "harvest" the sunlight that bounces off the Earth into energy sources. The facility being built in the Bishan district is scheduled for completion by the end of 2021.
Project leader Zhong Yuanchang, a professor at Chongqing University's School of Microelectronics and Communication Engineering, said the infrastructure, called the Bishan Space Solar Power Plant, or Bishan Base, had been delayed. The project was stopped in 2010 due to political pressure and financial interference. But last June, the project was decided to continue.
Later, there will be stations on Earth designed to collect the Sun's energy wirelessly from solar panel power plants in Earth's orbit. The benefits of harvesting solar energy collected directly from space are unaffected by weather conditions and night time.
Quoted from China Science Daily, Bishan Base is planned to be the first large -scale power plant facility in China for testing, observation integration, and development of new ways to harness energy sources from solar light.
But for now, researchers are building small-scale test power plants for use in 2030. To do that, the team must test transmissions from low altitudes, before moving to altitudes that use ultra-high voltage power transmissions, to eventually use wireless transmissions. from orbit. China dreams that in 2050, they can build gigawatt -scale commercial space solar power plants.
Zhong said that for now, the research team is using an air balloon at an altitude as a floating platform to test the transmission of microwave power at an altitude of 300 meters.
The concept of solar panels transmitting power wirelessly back to Earth is nothing new. In 1941, Isaac Asimov described the technology in his science fiction short story entitled "Reason," and in the early 1970s Peter Glaser received a patent for the design of a device that transmits power from satellites to Earth using microwaves.
NASA has explored the concept several times, and Japan's space agency JAXA began developing the outer space solar power system in 1998.
The U.S. Navy's research lab is also conducting tests to explore this technology, and Caltech is trying to use funds from the donations of anonymous billionaires to develop similar technologies.
Not to be outdone, the UK Space Energy Initiative has commissioned a thorough study of solar energy, and a British private company called International Electric has promised to radiate solar power directly to static and mobile devices using a phased arrangement.