This is the best summary I could come up with:
But its super-efficient design for harvesting constant sunlight - called CASSIOPeiA - requires the system to rotate towards the sun, whatever its position, while still sending power to a fixed receiver on the ground.
That’s now been shown to work for the first time at Queen’s University Belfast, with a wireless beam successfully “steered” across a lab to turn on a light.
Solar panels capture 13 times more energy in space than they do on the ground because the light intensity is higher and there’s no atmosphere, clouds or night.
Even though some energy would be lost by the time it is beamed back to Earth and connected to the electricity grid, it would still far outstrip solar generation on the ground.
But it’s the production of power around the clock that makes space-based solar energy so attractive for providing a “baseload” to back up ground-based renewables.
In the UK the government, university researchers and companies including EDF and the National Grid have formed the Space Energy Initiative to accelerate plans to put a solar power station in orbit.
The original article contains 693 words, the summary contains 179 words. Saved 74%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
mannycalavera@feddit.uk 6 months ago
Wait, isn’t this the plot to Die Another Day? It’s going to transpire that this is a high energy death ray built by the Chinese and only an invisible cloaking car can’t stop it.
blackn1ght@feddit.uk 6 months ago
It was North Korea, but yeah it does sound familiar! I wonder if it could be used to insta cook a pot noodle…