Overview Energy wants to beam energy from space to existing solar farms
Overview Energy emerged from stealth today with a plan to use the world’s solar panels as nighttime collectors of power beamed down from space. The startup plans to use large solar arrays in geosynchronous orbit — about 22,000 miles above the Earth where satellites match the planet’s rotation — to harvest sunlight. It will then use infrared lasers to transmit that power to utility-scale solar farms on Earth, allowing them to send power to the grid nearly round the clock. Overview has raised $20 million to date, and part of that money has gone toward an airborne demonstration of its power beaming technology. A light aircraft transmitted power using a laser to a ground receiver over a distance of 5 kilometers (3 miles). Investors include the Aurelia Institute,…
