Posts Tagged ‘solar power’
Space Solar Power by 2016?
As far as alternative energy sources go, solar power has always been the 800 pound gorilla. It seems a no-brainer — a free and virtually limitless source of power for any clever enough to harness it. Unfortunately, factors such as the day/night cycle and the filtering effect of Earth’s atmosphere have conspired to make solar power somewhat inconvenient and inefficient.
In 1968, Dr. Peter Glaser proposed a solution to both of these shortcomings. His idea was to put a massive array of city-sized solar cells into high geosynchronous orbit. Undeterred by nightfall, clouds, seasons, or atmospheric interference, these satellites would collect and convert the sun’s energy into an electromagnetic microwave beam. This beam would be transmitted to large receiving antennas on the Earth, where it would be converted to electricity and distributed on the national electric power grid.
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