Solar farms in Space could use lasers to beam electricity back down to the Earth.

While it might sound too good to be true, harvesting solar energy from space and beaming it to Earth using microwaves is something happening in the near future. In fact, Martin Soltau of the Sustainable Energy India Initiative (SEII) predicts that as soon as 2035 this could become a reality. SEII is currently working on a project called Cassiopeia which plans to deploy a constellation of very large satellites in a high orbit around Earth. Once deployed, these satellites would collect solar energy and beam it back down to Earth. As Mr Soltau explains, there’s plenty of room for the solar panels in orbit, and “the Sun’s supply of energy is vast.” Earlier this year the UK government announced £3m for SBSP projects after conducting an engineering study which found that the technology was viable. SEI is hoping to get a big chunk of that money by using satellites capable of delivering around 2GWs worth of power each – comparable to nuclear power plants on Earth. Plus, without interference from our atmosphere, space-based solar panels are able to collect a lot more energy than their ground-based counterparts. Similar projects are also under development elsewhere but they do face many challenges – like figuring out how robots will assemble them.

As you know, the Air Force Research Lab is working on critical technologies that could make this project a reality, like improving solar cell efficiencies or creating designs for deployable structures. The lab recently successfully demonstrated new components for a device called the sandwich tile, which converts sunlight into radio waves.