Selling Sunlight: The truth behind US firm’s sci-fi plan of providing sunlight after dark

Can you imagine being able to order sunlight from your phone to light up the night? While this may sound like something out of a sci-fi movie, a California-based company, known as Reflect Orbital, is attempting to bring this idea to life. And the internet is buzzing over their technology, which promises to deliver sunlight to you, even when the sun has set!

What do we know about this company? How do they plan to bring sunlight after dark? How will this help us? We throw light on these questions and much, much more.

All about Reflect Orbital

Reflect Orbital is a California-based start-up with Ben Nowack as its co-founder and CEO. The company’s mission statement is to develop technology to sell sunlight to those who need it. According to the company’s website, Nowack spent years diving into hundreds of technical projects before starting Reflect Orbital to train for the day when the right idea came along.

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Sunlight on demand — the viral claim

Reflect Orbital aims to provide sunlight directly to one’s location through an app. Simply put, it wants to provide sunlight on demand, as one would order food, delivered straight from space to one’s home.

In April, he introduced this revolutionary idea at the International Conference on Energy from Space conference in London, saying, “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.”

And now, the idea has been put down on paper with the company’s website showing what the service would look like. On the site, one is prompted to “reserve a spot of light” with the launch expected to take place in 2025. One can also move your cursor around a map to shine a spot of sunlight on a particular location.

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New things to play with on the website! pic.twitter.com/NJcOjFSblf

— Ben Nowack ☀️🌎🪞 (@bennbuilds) August 22, 2024

While the video on the website is simply a simulation, it provides people with an idea of what it could be like in reality. After all, the thought of having personal access to sunlight — whenever and wherever — is intriguing and appealing to one and all. It is so alluring that according to co-founder and current CTO of Reflect Orbital, Tristan Semmelhack, the company has received “30,000 applications for a spot of light and climbing every second”.

Science behind sensational claim

But how exactly is Reflect Orbital aiming to provide people sunlight after dark? The idea is to use advanced satellite technology to capture sunlight and then reflect it back to Earth, illuminating your surroundings as if it were still daytime.

Reflect Orbital envisions sending 57 satellites equipped with massive mirrors that can capture and reflect sunlight. Each satellite will be fitted with mylar mirrors — 33 feet by 33 feet in size — that deploy in orbit. Mylar is a plastic material used in space blankets, insulators and packaging. The mirrors are engineered to concentrate light into a tight beam that could be steered and focused based on the demand by solar farm operators, reports Space.com.

According to Nowack, these satellites could then provide an additional 30 minutes of sunshine to those solar power plants during peak demand times. “The problem is that solar energy is not available when we actually want it,” Nowack said during the conference, explaining that solar farms can’t produce any energy at night.

Reflect Orbital’s plan, which sounds unbelievable, has been tried in the past by Russia too. In 1992, Russia launched the Znamya 2 mission and deployed a mirror in orbit that briefly flashed a beam of light toward Earth. However, scientists were never able to replicate the success, mainly due to how expensive sending satellites into the sky was back then.

And in an attempt to perfect their technology, last July, the team fit an eight by eight-foot mylar mirror onto a hot air balloon intending to reflect sunlight onto solar panels they towed in on a truck. The mirror on the hot air balloon finally reflected light down on the panels, generating roughly 500 watts of energy per square metre of panel.

Watch this to see what we are working on 👇 https://t.co/GEy93lzeSQ

— Reflect Orbital (@reflectorbital) April 10, 2024

Benefits of such technology

While the technology is still in conceptual mode, it will be significant if it converts to reality. Experts note that it will help with the inconsistent nature of solar power, which makes it a significant hurdle to its widespread adoption as a renewable energy source.

Low, thick clouds and stormy weather can also block sunlight during the daytime, when there would normally be ample opportunities to create solar power.

As Nowack said, “We think that reflector-based technologies can solve this problem.” If this technology came to life, one wouldn’t have to depend on nuclear and coal- and gas-fired power plants for backup.

However, while this may seem revolutionary, it’s not without problems. Experts note that it may add to light pollution or almost immediately fall back to Earth. Speaking at the London conference, Andrew Williams of the European Southern Observatory warned that orbiting reflectors, unless designed with care, could shine more brightly than the brightest stars and exacerbate the satellite light pollution problem that astronomers are already facing.

But despite the possible issues that it may cause, the technology pushes the boundaries of what’s possible — we could soon have sunlight brought to us, no matter day or night!

With inputs from agencies