In China, Longi Green Energy Technology Co will send solar panels into space to study the possibility of transmitting solar energy to Earth.
In the future, this will allow eliminate the main shortcoming of SPPs, namely inefficient operation in the dark, reports Bloomberg.
Company Longi is the world's largest manufacturer of solar technologies.
Wu Zhijian, president of the China Space Foundation, said Longi's decision to establish a laboratory focused on this task could be the first step in the solar sector's cooperation with China's space program and in the direction of extraplanetary power plants.
The prospect of using solar energy from space is attracting the attention of industry and scientists from around the world, particularly in India, the United States, Japan, and russia.
So scientists from the California Institute of Technology, USA, launched the space solar energy program after a $100 million grant in 2013.
In 2022 Chinese researchers from Xidian University said that they successfully tested a full-system model of technology designed to transmit solar energy from space. Their project captures sunlight high above the ground, converts it into microwave beams and transmits it through the air to a receiving station on the ground to be converted into electricity. The researchers hope that this process can be extended to cover long distances from the orbital panels to Earth.
As EcoPolitic reported before, scientists from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia have found a way to capture the energy that flows from the Earth at night, which will allow use solar energy after sunset.
