Japan has been working on this project for decades. And now they have announced that they will try to carry it out in 2025. JAXA, the Japanese aerospace agency, managed in 2015 to transmit 1.8 kilowatts of power at a distance of 50 meters. A wireless power transmission that laid the foundation for his idea of a solar farm in space.
The first test is coming up. Professor Naoki Shinohara of Kyoto University will be in charge of launching the first solar panel in space. A public-private initiative that will consist of sending several small satellites in 2025. These satellites will be equipped with solar panels and will try to send the energy obtained to a ground station, located kilometers away.
Send energy at a distance, an idea that comes from afar. Shinohara proposed this possibility as early as the 1980s, when he demonstrated that it was possible to send energy over a distance. Although, the project of a space solar farm is not so much a question of physics, but of cost.
The first time people thought of using solar panels in space was in 1968. Peter Glaser received the patent a few years after this SSPS (‘satellite solar-power system’). The main advantage of these panels is that since they are not affected by the atmosphere, there is not as much attenuation of solar radiation or of the night phase.
Japan is not the only country pursuing this idea. In addition to Japan, China has also been pursuing this idea for years. China’s goal also points to the end of this decade for the launch of this project where energy would be sent using a laser.
China hopes that by 2035, space solar power will be capable of producing 10 MW. An amount that already in 2050 would be considerably higher, rising to 2 GW.
A new space race. Even more ambitious are the plans of the United Kingdom, which expects that by 2040 the space solar energy of its country will be 30 GW. Too far away to be able to specify the viability of this objective, but representative of the hopes of the different countries regarding this technology.
The United States also has space solar power among its goals. In 2021, a group of US Army scientists successfully tested a solar panel in space with which to provide energy to Earth, capable of generating 10 watts.
Too expensive to be effective (for now). Space solar farms are not cheap. Generating about a gigawatt, which would be the equivalent of a nuclear reactor, would require panels equivalent to an area of 2 square kilometers. A huge size to place in space with satellites.
To get an idea, estimates are that such a solar panel would cost about 1,000 million yen, about 6,600 million euros. Logically the first stone of the project will be much smaller. Whether the SSPS system works well enough to scale in the future remains to be seen.
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