The beaming of solar power from space back down to earth using lasers sounds like science fiction, and was even floated in an Isaac Asimov short story back in the 1940s.
But that is exactly what a California-based startup is testing: Mini solar farms in the form of low-orbit satellites.
California-based startup Aetherflux plans to send its satellite technology into orbit on a SpaceX rocket next year. Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt is the company’s CEO.
“We’re going to do a constellation of satellites where each one transmits power with infrared lasers,” said Bhatt. “And the benefits of this are, number one, you get to distribute the power generation across a lot of satellites, as opposed to one monolithic one, but also the spot that you’re able to project onto the ground — the actual thing that collects the power — you can make small.”
Solar power would be collected in space and then beamed down through lasers wirelessly to a network of small, ground power stations. Having several stations to collect energy makes the satellite system more efficient.
“You may have one satellite that’s projecting power to one location on the ground, and as it keeps moving around the earth, it’ll find another ground station and start projecting power there,” Bhatt explained.
Aetherflux is working first with the U.S. Department of Defense, which Bhatt said is an important market because it solves a real problem of getting power into the battlefield, where caravans of diesel generators become enemy targets.
This initial phase is attractive to investors, such as Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures, who say working with the government initially will help scale the company quickly to the broader market.
“We think that the military customer is large enough — and for lack of better word, difficult enough — of a customer that if we can serve, we can build a constellation and we can be at scale. And at that point, we will have dropped the cost of the technology such that we can expand into other, into other customers,” said Christian Garcia, managing partner at Breakthrough Energy Ventures.
In addition to Breakthrough, Aetherflux is backed by Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and New Enterprise Associates. Its total funding so far is $60 million.
Bhatt said the technology is expensive now, and the challenge will be making it cost-competitive with other energy sources. He said he thinks advancements in launch technology and the maturation of the components will be important factors.
The more satellites with newer versions of the technology should bring costs down.
Aetherflux is not the only company exploring space-based solar farms.
Others include Cal-Tech, Virtus Solis and UK-based Space Solar. Early this year, China announced a plan to build a 1-kilometer-wide solar power station in space that will beam continuous energy back to Earth via microwaves.
— CNBC producer Lisa Rizzolo contributed to this piece.