It’s hard work soaking up sunlight to generate clean electricity. After about 25 to 30 years, solar panels wear out. Over the years, heating and cooling cycles stress the materials. Small cracks ...

Is space-based solar power a costly, risky pipe dream? Or is it a viable way to combat climate change? Although beaming solar power from space to Earth could ultimately involve transmitting gigawatts, ...

If you rewind the clock fifteen or twenty years, residential solar energy was a tough sell. The systems were incredibly expensive, wildly inefficient, and—let’s be brutally honest—they were usually an ...

Beaming solar energy from space is not new; telecommunications satellites have been sending microwave signals generated by solar power back to Earth since the 1960s. But sending useful amounts of ...

A solar power project in the Gobi Desert has moved the needle on the size and scope of global photovoltaic installations, aided by innovation in equipment and construction. The numbers tell much of ...

Space-Based Solar Power (SBSP) addresses the land use and intermittency challenges of terrestrial solar and wind by providing 24/7, baseload, and dispatchable carbon-free electricity from orbit.

Early science fiction writers and mid-20th-century engineers envisioned solar power satellites, but economic and technical barriers stalled progress for decades. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have revived ...

Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily. Earlier this summer, Tara McDermott, who’s in charge of policy communications for a ...

South African Luke Maximo Bell has improved his solar drone and set the unofficial record for duration flights of electric ...