China has been urged to speed up the development of solar power in space to gain a stronger footing in the new energy sector and the space race.
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Ge Changchun, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, called in an article for a top-down strategy to speed up efforts to develop the technology and narrow the gap with the United States in sectors such as materials and precision control.
Space solar power facilities are designed to be built and operated in orbit, where they convert solar energy directly into electricity before transmitting the power to Earth via microwaves or lasers.
Unlike ground-based solar plants, space stations are not affected by the weather or nightfall. Solar radiation in space is also far more intense than on Earth, making the technology a more efficient way of continuously generating power.
China’s research in this field relies primarily on efforts by universities and research institutions, but Ge wrote in an article for China Science Daily that they “lack the capacity to support such a vast, complex systems project”.
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Compared with the United States, which conducted solar energy transmission experiments as early as the 1970s, China was relatively late in developing space solar power.