Persistent Optical Wireless Energy Relay (POWER)

Abstract

The Persistent Optical Wireless Energy Relay (POWER) program will design, build, and demonstrate effective optical energy relays. These relays will enable a ground-based laser to efficiently transmit energy over 100s of kilometers leveraging a high-altitude transmission layer which minimizes atmospheric absorption and scattering. The high-altitude energy relay nodes will redirect, correct, and selectively harvest energy from the optical energy source and then beam that energy back down to the surface for conversion to electricity. These relays are the core building blocks to construct a flexible, resilient, reconfigurable, persistent, and distributed energy network. POWER will also produce conceptual designs for new platform capabilities realized by offboarding power storage and generation. These platforms will have range, endurance, and payload power performance that is no longer tied to platform size enabling a new class of small but high-performance platforms.

Document Details

Document Type
Accomplishment
Publication Date
Oct 01, 2025
Source ID
cd5eb8b42df43e929a59c9635b32ee49

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Computer Networking
  • Energy Conservation and Renewable Energy Engineering.
  • Spectroscopy.

Technology Areas

  • Directed Energy

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