Science & Technology

California firm wants to make the Sun shine in the middle of the night

By T.K. Randall
August 28, 2024

Image: AI-generated (Midjourney) Solar panels are an effective way to generate unlimited amounts of power from nothing more than the light from the Sun, but there is a big catch - they only work during the day.

Now California tech startup Reflect Orbital is proposing a unique solution to this problem - reflecting the light from the Sun onto solar panel arrays in the middle of the night.

The brainchild of CEO Ben Nowack, this novel approach to boosting power generation represents an alternative to ideas such as placing solar panels directly in orbit.

Instead, Reflect Orbital would launch 57 small satellites equipped with mylar mirrors that would reflect the light from the Sun directly onto solar panels on the ground after dark.A small-scale demonstration of the idea was recently achieved using a hot air balloon equipped with a mirror, which - from a distance of 242 feet away - shone enough sunlight down onto a ground-based solar panel to generate 500 watts of energy per square meter of panel.

The concept shows such promise that Reflect Orbital even has some competition - the University of Glasgow's SOLSPACE project - which is also seeking to use reflectors placed in orbit.

So could it soon be possible for the Sun to shine anywhere in the world in the middle of the night ?

It will certainly be interesting to see what the teams come up with.

You can watch Reflect Orbital's hot air balloon test in the video below.


Source: Mail Online

Tags: Solar, Sun