Calling it the equivalent of the massive Three Gorges Dam in outer space, the Chinese aerospace industry plans to launch a solar farm in geostationary orbit above earth.
The 1-kilometer wide solar array will be able to gather solar energy from the sun 24/7, ten times more efficiently than land-based solar panels.
Orbiting 36,000 km above the planet, the solar array will capture the sun’s energy and beam it back to earth using microwaves.
While this sounds like science fiction, China has actually been working on the project since 2019, and plans to assemble the huge array in the coming years in space.
Learn more about this huge engineering project on Dezeen.
Once in place, this one-kilometre-wide solar array is expected to harvest as much energy in a year as the total quantity of oil that can be extracted from the Earth, reported Sustainability Magazine. The energy is planned to be transmitted to ground using microwaves.
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