The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has announced that, via a series of recent tests in New Mexico, it has set multiple new records for wirelessly transmitting power over a distance. As part of DARPA’s Persistent Optical Wireless Energy Relay (POWER) program, a team was able to record a 30 second transmission of more than 800 Watts of power over a distance of 5.3 miles. The agency goes on to state that over the course of the test campaign, it was able to wirelessly transmit over a megajoule of energy.
For reference, DARPA states that “previously, the greatest reported distance records for an appreciable amount of optical power (>1 microwatt) were 230 watts of average power at 1.7 kilometers for 25 seconds and a lesser (but undisclosed) amount of power at 3.7 kilometers.” This means that the agency was able to achieve more than double the energy transfer over double the distance. These new tests were conducted in a manner that required the transmission to pass through the thickest part of the atmosphere, as the team wished to replicate less-than-ideal scenarios that may be encountered in the field.
“It is beyond a doubt that we absolutely obliterated all previously reported optical power beaming demonstrations for power and distance,” commented POWER Program Manager Paul Jaffe on the test’s results.
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