Eco Factor: Harvesting solar winds could help generate one billion billion GW of power.
Until now, solar and wind energy have been the most prominent forms of available renewable energy resources that can easily be tapped. Instead of working on technological improvements to better solar and wind harnessing systems, researchers at the Washington State University have come up with a proposal to harvest energy in the form of solar winds.
The proposal might seem too futuristic, but the research team believes that the technology required to harvest electrons from solar winds is already available. The team is hoping that their concept could generate one billion billion gigawatts of power, which is much more than what humanity needs.
The system will be based on the use of a satellite which includes a charged copper wire to capture electrons zooming away from the sun at several hundred kilometers per second. According to the team’s calculation, a satellite with 300m of copper wire, a two meter wide receiver and a 10 meter sail would generate enough energy to power 1000 homes. The proposal is actually a satellite with 1000m of copper wire and a sail 8400km across, which could generate one billion billion GW of power, which is 100 billion times the power Earth currently needs.
While technology is currently available to harvest energy from solar winds, transmitting all that energy back to earth is still not perfected. The system will need a laser that is more focused than all prototypes developed till date. However, if such a laser can be developed that doesn’t spread out and lose its energy, the environmental and energy problems of the planet can be solved with electrons thrown towards us by the sun.
Via: MSNBC
