The European Space Agency (ESA) plans to build a power plant in orbit that will transmit electricity to Earth.
Although the idea is not new, nobody has yet been able to develop a project that involves electricity in space. The European Space Agency (ESA) will advance on this subject first if the results of its latest investigation are encouraging.
ESA claims that the Solaris project will set the stage for a potential decision to start building the plant in 2025. When it’s overcast outside, solar energy usage on Earth is less effective, and there is no production at night. The power plant will be positioned in the upper atmosphere. Solar panels function incredibly well because sunlight in space is five times stronger than it is on Earth.
Certainly, we have been using solar panels in space for years, so this is not a particularly strange idea. The challenge is in transporting this energy to Earth. The reference design for how ESA will accomplish this takes a 2.45 gigahertz microwave into consideration. Photovoltaic cells will be used to generate energy, which will then be sent through microwaves to earth-based “rectennas,” or receiving stations. Here, it can be converted back to power and fed into the grid.
The project still has certain problems that need to be fixed. To build something that weighs thousands of tons in orbit now, it would need to launch several rockets, which would be extremely expensive. As a result, both satellites and receiving stations must currently be extremely large.
This project will be completed in 2050!
