Prof Stephen Sweeney in National Geographic Daily News
Wednesday 7 December 2011
Beam It Down: A Drive to Launch Space-Based Solar
In an aircraft hangar in Germany, scientists are firing lasers across the room in the hopes of bringing science fiction to life: beaming solar power directly from space.
With funding from the European aerospace group EADS-Astrium, Stephen's team has been studying the best way to beam power from a solar-collecting satellite to the ground.
"It's still an ongoing experiment," Sweeney said. "We're using an aircraft hangar where we can fire the laser across the building and put photovoltaics [PV] on the other side, then we can look at things that influence power transfer over that kind of a distance."
Full article available here.