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China looks to space

solar by 2028

CHINA A team at China’s Xidian University has given beams can then be converted back into electrical
the clearest indication yet that Beijing is com- energy.
peting to lead the development of space-based No immediate information was given on size
solar power generation by the end of the decade. or overall scope of the space-based facility Xid-
The team from Xidian, one of China’s ian University is planning to put into orbit over
most prestigious public research universities, the next six years.
announced that it had tested a system aimed at Similar programmes being researched by
allowing the transmission of solar power gener- NASA in the United States have indicated that
ated by a space-based power plant back to Earth. large-scale platforms made up of huge panels
According to the research team, “The world’s would be capable of sending huge amounts of
first full-link and full-system space solar power energy to earth in a similarly wireless manner.
plant ground verification system successfully In announcing the successful testing of the
passed (the) expert Group acceptance. This ver- ‘full system model’, the Xidian research team did
ification system has broken through and verified concede they were riding on the back of individ-
a number of key technologies such as high-ef- ual part testing of the overall technology previ-
ficiency light concentrating and photoelectric ously carried out elsewhere.
conversion, microwave conversion, microwave France, India, Japan, Russia, the United
emission and waveform optimisation, micro- Kingdom as well as the US are all known to be
wave beam pointing measurement and control, conducting research into space-generated solar
microwave reception and rectification, and power generation.
smart mechanical structure design.” Japan in particular is now said to be leading
It is understood a number of external bod- the pack in many areas of space-based solar
ies were also represented at the testing earlier in development.
June. “At present, in the development roadmap
Led by Xidian University’s President Duan of many technologically powerful countries,
Baoyan, the ‘Daily Project’ team has now pen- Japan has come from behind and has become
cilled in 2028 as the date the group want to see a one of the most cutting-edge researchers in
solar power plant established in a geostationary the world,” the researchers in Xidian said, add-
orbit above China. ing: “They were the first in the world to for-
Research carried out by other groups in 2014 mally include space solar power plants in the
had previously announced 2030 as the target national space programme, and they also pro-
date for effective plant deployment. posed a unique concept of distributed tethered
Continued research of the viability and main- solar power plants, and formulated a three-
tenance of space-based solar power generation stage long-term development roadmap of
is, according to Baoyan, “a hot spot in the world”, ‘research-development-commercial.’
a reference to ongoing efforts to the same end In 2015, Japanese researchers (also) car-
primarily in the US. ried out a microwave wireless energy transfer
Referring to the OMEGA project, as it is experiment over a distance of 55 metres, and
being called at Xidian, officials indicated that verified the transmission based on the 5.8 GHz
solar energy would initially be stored in space frequency, solid-state source and phased array
before being converted into electrical energy to system, with a transmission efficiency of 9.88%
be transmitted to Earth. … in terms of microwave wireless energy trans-
In the testing phase, this was seen by way of a mission technology temporarily leading the
75-metre tall steel structure said to be capable of world,” before once again pointing at the com-
receiving energy transmitted from space by way plete circuit testing achieved in the Xidian-led
of microwave beams, although the testing phase research; “However, Japan’s test system is still
saw the beams transmitted a distance of just 55 not a full link, and lacks the process from light
metres. to electricity.”™
Once received back on Earth from space, the

P8 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 25 22•June•2022