The country has led the research effort for many decades and now wants to be the first to achieve the goal.
To beam back solar energy generated in space, scientists plan to use microwaves, the same waves that cook our food in microwave ovens. Since microwaves are undeterred by cloud cover, they are the ideal means to transfer solar power back to the receiving stations on the ground, where they can be converted into electrical energy.
Japan has been a world leader in this space since the 1980s when researchers achieved power transmission using microwaves in space. In 2009, a research group led by Naoki Shinohara, a professor at Kyoto University, transmitted power from an altitude of nearly 100 feet to a mobile phone on the ground.Over the years, the team has worked to refine its technology and demonstrated microwave power transmissions both horizontally and vertically.
Shinohara believes that if Japan can demonstrate this technology before the rest of the world, it will offer the country a bargaining tool with other nations engaged in space research. As part of its plans to demonstrate the working of the technology, the team plans to use small satellites which will beam microwaves to ground stations hundreds of miles away. The experiment will be attempted in the year 2025 when Japan hopes to beat the likes of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory and thein the U.S., the European Space Agency, and Chongqing University in China, who are also racing to develop similar technologies.
Demonstrations aside, the commercial application of the technology is still a major challenge. With currently available solar technologies, a one-gigawatt solar plant in space, the equivalent of a nuclear reactor, would require panels that extend for 1.25 miles for their length and breadth. This is estimated to cost more than a trillion yen .
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