A pioneering New Zealand company has showcased a potentially ground breaking prototype at the European Space Agency in Munich.
Engineers and scientists at Auckland-based company, Enrod, have already worked out how to harness solar energy in space, convert it into microwaves and beam it back to Earth.
Equipment enabling the solar energy capture and transmission to wirelessly occur has been demonstrated before European Union officials who observed an Emrod’s high tech transmitter and receiver in action.
The experiment involved two kilowatts of power collected from solar panels being wirelessly sent from a transmitter at one end of the room to a receiver at the other. That electricity was sufficient to power a model city.
There’s a long way to go from the prototype ‘proof of concept’ phase to sending back solar energy from space. A million times more power needs to be transmitted a million times further.
But Emrod’s chief scientist says the foundation is laid for future development.
“You scale it up to the sort of distances we’re looking at for the space based server which is 36,000 kilometres, three times the diameter of earth,” Ray Simpkin says. “But the actual principle remains the same as the one we demonstrated in Munich.”
Simpkin estimates trillions of dollars in investment is now needed to advance development to the point that energy from space is used on Planet Earth.
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