Although it is not a new concept, no one has been able to bring electricity in space to the project stage until now. If the results of the new study of ESA (European Space Agency) are positive, the agency will be the first to take a step in this field.
According to ESA, the SOLARIS initiative will lay the groundwork for a possible decision to begin development of the plant in 2025. Using solar energy on Earth causes a decrease in efficiency in cloudy weather and no production at night. The plan is to place the power plant in the upper atmosphere. Solar panels work extremely efficiently, as the sunlight in space is ten times more intense than on Earth. If implemented, this project will help meet Europe’s target of Net Zero by 2050.
Of course, we’ve been using solar panels in space for decades, so this is definitely not an innovative idea; The hard part comes in getting this energy to Earth. The reference design for how ESA will do this considers using a 2.45 gigahertz microwave. Energy will be taken from photovoltaic cells and transmitted over microwaves to receiving stations called “rectennas” on Earth. Convert it back to electricity here and it will be fed into the electricity grid.
There are still some issues that need to be resolved in the project. Currently both satellite and receiving stations have to be very, very large; and the cost of launching many rockets to build something that weighs thousands of tons in orbit is astronomical. However, this cost can actually be significantly cheaper than existing solutions for the same level of energy output.
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