Reflect Orbital, a California startup, has opened applications for anyone who wants to use a satellite with a mirror on it to reflect sunlight to a specific location on Earth after dark. You might be wondering: What?
A few years ago, VICE spoke with Reflect Orbital’s founder and CEO, Ben Nowack, about his plans to generate solar power at night.
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“I had an interesting way to solve the real issue with solar power. It’s this unstoppable force,” Nowack said in the interview. “Everybody’s installing so many solar panels everywhere. It’s really a great candidate to power humanity. But sunlight turns off. It’s called nighttime. If you solve that fundamental problem, you fix solar everywhere.”
The company’s orbital mirror is set to launch in 2025, and you can “apply for sunlight” for the next few months. There’s “limited availability,” and already supposedly over 30,000 applications. It really just sounds like a one-time test, though: you only get four minutes for a diameter of 5km. No price is listed.
Now, there must be a practical, life-saving reason someone wants to spend an unspecified amount of money on some nighttime sun, right?
“The problem is that solar energy is not available when we actually want it,” Nowack said in April at the International Conference on Energy from Space. “It would be really great if we could get some solar energy before the sun rises and after sunset, because then you could actually charge higher prices and make a lot more money. And we think that reflector-based technologies can solve this problem.”
According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, the price of Solar PV modules has dropped 90% since 2009, and their efficacy has only increased. However, there’s still no solution to the lack of solar power generated on windy, overcast days—and, of course, nights.
Perhaps purchasing sunlight after dark via Reflect Orbital could solve the issue.
“We want to make it as easy as possible—like, log into a website, tell us your GPS coordinates, and we get you some sunlight after dark,” said Nowack.
