Australian startup that sends electricity via lasers wins $3m in seed funding

An Australia technology startup that says it can transmit electricity via beams of light has raised $3 million in seed funding from a range of Australian venture capital firms.

Although it sounds like science fiction, similar technology was tested just this week by the California Institute of Technology’s (Caltech) Space Solar Power Project and builds on a theory developed by Nikola Tesla around how to send electricity over long distances. 

That experiment showed it’s possible to wirelessly send electricity from space to Earth using the Microwave Array for Power-transfer Low-orbit Experiment (MAPLE), an array of flexible and lightweight microwave power transmitters on the Space Solar Power Demonstrator. 

The Australian version has been designed by Aquila Earth, which says its prototype can power drones in flight by using optical relay systems and solar panel receivers.

The seed funding from the likes of Blackbird Ventures, Startmate, Icehouse Ventures and Possible Ventures will be spent on scaling up the technology from low power levels to be able to send kilowatts of energy.

“Think of it as like the leap from dial up internet to Wi-Fi,” says co-founder and CEO Billy Jeremijenko. 

“We’re taking electricity from power lines and poles along a direct route and extending it through a dynamic, wireless network.” 

WonkaVision was on to something

Wireless power transfer has been around for decades, dramatised by Roald Dahl’ in Charlie and the Chocolate factory with the WonkaVision chocolate bar teleport machine.

It is already used in real life by the likes of satellite communications and radio frequency identification (RFID) tags for data transfer, but at a scale of microwatts to milliwatts. 

Scaling that up to watts and kilowatts and megawatts, and getting rid of transmission wires and power poles entirely or, as in the case of the CalTech experiment, sending solar power from space to Earth, is an exciting prospect. 

Already companies like Emrod in New Zealand are testing and trying to commercialise their version of the technology. Emrod is working with investor and partner PowerCo to test beams that are shielded by lasers which cut the stream of energy if obstacles, such as birds, are detected. 

In a white paper published last year, Aquila said it aims to make a laser energy transmission system capable of precisely locking onto moving targets at great distances.

“Laser transmitters will target a constellation of adaptive optical satellites that create pathways for energy to flow through space to wherever it’s needed while focusing the beam to maintain low divergence and loss,” the paper said.

“Specialised receivers will capture this energy and efficiently convert it into electricity.”

Applications could include wireless charging for long-haul transport, offgrid power connections, and distributing far-flung renewable energy resources. 

Filling the sky with… lasers?

If the ambition is vast, so are the challenges.

The white paper outlined three: technical, regulatory and environmental. 

Technically, beams must be precisely locked on to a target and because the electricity is being moved using lasers, deviations could cause substantial damage. 

“There are several regulatory concerns about directing high-powered lasers through free space. For example, the laser beam must not intersect with any bird, plane or satellite; when people are positioned near the beam pathway, the radiation levels they experience should be eye-safe,” the paper noted.

And environmentally, little is known about how firing high-energy beams through the atmosphere will affect its chemical makeup.

Aquila cofounder Nelson Smith is undeterred by the challenge, saying it’s the logical next step for the energy industry. 

“We found that technologies from various industries were coincidentally converging on enabling wireless energy transfer via light. Within this opportunity, we discovered a way to do it safely, cheaply, and at high power. Now, we are left with the fun engineering challenge to build it,” he said.