Japanese Researchers Make a Gargantuan  Leap Forward in Wireless Energy Technology

In Tokyo, Japanese researchers have discovered an entire new angle on wireless technology – beaming energy through space. Their new discovery is an essential step towards engineers’ capacity to produce solar power in space for utilization on Earth.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) reports that researchers attained the transmission of energy by utilizing microwaves to convey 1.8 kilowatts of power with awesome exactness to a focus that is 170 feet away. This denotes the first run through such a high yield of power has been exchanged by means of microwaves to such a little target.

A Discovery News report said, “While the distance was not huge, the technology could pave the way for mankind to eventually tap the vast amount of solar energy available in space and use it here on Earth,”.

“This was the first time anyone has managed to send a high output of nearly two kilowatts of electric power via microwaves to a small target, using a delicate directivity control device,” said a representative for JAXA. But it could take decades before we see practical application of the technology—maybe in the 2040s or later. There are a number of challenges to overcome, such as how to send huge structures into space, how to construct them and how to maintain them.”

Satellites, for example, the ISS routinely gather solar power for their own particular functions, yet sending solar-generated power down to Earth for utilization has not appeared practical until JAXA’s disclosure. JAXA scientists imagine a future in which satellites conveying solar panel boards and antennas will send sun oriented shut down to beneficiaries on Earth from around 22,300 miles up.

Solar power is less demanding to gather in space than on Earth because of the absence of impedance from mists and the capacity of a satellite to invest additional time in daylight.



  1. bartj says

    Waste of money….we already get 1 kw of power per square meter without going into space. this is a corporate welfare project.

  2. says

    WHat happens if birds fly into the beam? If they have little magnets in their beaks to orient them with earth so they can migrate won’t the least dangerous thing that will happen is that the magnets will become scrambled?

  3. ADam says

    Nice. Crack an egg on your head and watch it get cooked from 170 feet way. This also can remedy world’s hunger

  4. Frank Luxem says

    Sorry, but this is totally silly. Beaming electricity from space to earth was first proposed in 1968. And it was tested earlier than that. “William C. Brown demonstrated in 1964, during Walter Cronkite’s CBS News program, a microwave-powered model helicopter that received all the power it needed for flight from a microwave beam. Between 1969 and 1975, Bill Brown was technical director of a JPL Raytheon program that beamed 30 kW of power over a distance of 1-mile (1.6 km) at 84% efficiency.[34]” (source: Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power#Microwave_power_transmission ) The process has been demonstrated many times since. This is not “GEE WHIZ new! This has never been done before!” The writer should have been part of the 21st century and Googled it. Worse, the editor should have done the same.

  5. Derpatron says

    Way to go, regurgitating 20 year old news. Besides, Tesla designed a global communications and power transmission tower over a hundred years ago, that excited the entire planet like a standing wave cavity and allowed energy to be pumped into the cavity, then extracted by a tuned ground antenna

  6. says

    Wireless transmission of energy in combination with something like the Tokamak seems to be the way to go. I’d like to see both receive more funding for research.

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