Everett firm seeks patent for solar power-station technology
Published 8:01 pm Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Everett-based PowerSat Corp. wants to harvest solar energy by putting satellites into space, and this week the company filed a patent for technologies that could put the long-pursued goal within reach.
For more than 30 years, scientists and entrepreneurs have toyed with the concept of generating energy directly from solar rays in space, where panels could be up to 25 percent more productive. Now, PowerSat Chief Executive William Maness thinks technologies developed by his company will solve some of the biggest obstacles delaying the quest to transmit solar power from space.
He says they’ve found a cheaper way to transport the devices into space. And PowerSat’s plan would eliminate the need for a large spacecraft altogether.
PowerSat plans to use many smaller satellites to work as one in its now-patented “BrightStar” technology. And the company’s “Solar Power Orbital Transfer” would use solar-powered electronic thrusters to power the space craft, instead of chemical propulsion typically used by satellites.
To the layman, it sounds like something from an episode of “Battlestar Gallactica.” But Maness, who founded PowerSat in 2000 with capital from his own investments, said it’s not a far-reaching idea.
“This sounds like science fiction, but so do cell phones, so do laptop computers,” he said. “This is something that is going to happen.”
A statement from PowerSat described the process this way: “Solar energy is captured via solar power satellites (known as powersats) and transmitted wirelessly to receiving stations at various points around the globe. Thousands of megawatts can be harnessed and shifted between receiving stations thousands of miles from each other — all in a matter of seconds.”
Maness wants to have prototype hardware by 2013 or 2014, and he’s seeking a successful transmission in less than a decade.
The company received some private investor financing for the project, but has not raised the billions needed to pull the project off.
Maness said he’s found a way to reduce the cost of launching a 2,500-megawatt power station by roughly $1 billion, Still, he says it will take time to raise enough capital.
“It’s not something where you can just write a check today and make it happen tomorrow,” he said.
Eight-year-old PowerSat weathered quieter times, when critics speculated that transmitting energy from space was neither economic nor physically prudent. But more recent awareness of a shift toward more solar-power research in Washington, D.C., has been a boon for the alternative energy industry.
A number of other companies are also in the race for space solar power, including Calif.-based Solaren and Switzerland-based Space Energy.
“Today, the convergence of technology and energy demand, combined with the political will to wean us off of fossil fuels, enables space solar power to fill a widening clean energy supply gap,” Maness said.
Amy Rolph: 425-339-3029 or arolph@heraldnet.com. Read her small business blog at cmg-northwest2.go-vip.net/heraldnet/section/BLOG31.
