Recently, PowerLight Technologies, an American developer of laser energy delivery systems, announced that the company has completed the construction of its new headquarters. The headquarters facility is described as including space for 50-75 engineers and technicians, 3D manufacturing capabilities, advanced modeling and simulation tools, and test, assembly and demonstration facilities.
Recently, Ms. Heidi Shyu, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, also visited the headquarters office and got her first tour of PowerLight's newest, state-of-the-art array of equipment, as well as a demonstration of wireless power beam technology.
Heidi Shyu oversees the activities of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), and the Undersecretariat staff, whose portfolio focuses on developing advanced technologies and capabilities for the U.S. military.PowerLight Technologies hopes to rapidly expand the company's product offerings, grow its team, and continue its commitment to solving the Department of Defense's s critical operational energy challenges.
PowerLight Technologies, an innovative operational energy provider capable of flexibly, securely and efficiently distributing kilowatts of power over kilometers, demonstrated its cutting-edge wireless power transmission and fiber-optic power solutions that support some of the Department of Defense's most pressing logistical challenges, particularly in some controversial and demanding environments -- such as enabling solar power in space.
Currently, PowerLight is developing two technologies, free-space energy transmission and fiber-optic energy, both of which rely on a light and energetics technology that converts electrical energy into high-intensity lasers, which are then guided, reshaped, and projected onto a customized solar cell receiver, thus enabling the process of converting light energy into electrical energy. The principle concept is as follows:
During Ms. Shyu's visit, Richard Gustafson, CEO of PowerLight, provided an overview of the various power beam use cases and scenarios that the company is developing, including wireless power beams - enabling uninterrupted and continuous flight of unmanned aircraft, powering 5G cellular infrastructure powering 5G cellular infrastructure, and powering lunar infrastructure, vehicles and networks.
Richard Gustafson also emphasized the importance of past and future DoD support for the continued acceleration of the development, adoption, and deployment of wireless power transmission technologies. Throughout the session following the tour, Ms. Shyu reiterated her support for PowerLight technology and its transformative potential to address multi-sector operational energy challenges.
He added: "Wireless power transmission offers a unique new capability to distribute energy more flexibly, efficiently and effectively to the digital infrastructure where it is most needed, and where it may not have been distributed in any other way before. The work we are doing will provide new capabilities to support U.S. military operations, and the commercially available power transfer solutions being tested today will increasingly support the rapidly growing and power-hungry digital infrastructure being deployed in the global commercial sector."
PowerLight's proprietary solution is capable of charging battery-powered devices while in a mobile or stationary location using specialized photovoltaic cell receivers. Their unique Light Power Beam technology converts electricity by using laser diodes to emit high-intensity light that is shaped into a beam and directed through free space to a receiver that collects the light and converts it back into usable electricity (DC power). The company's core technology is said to have been developed through a partnership with NASA and the Department of Defense.
