Comment on Lasers Could Soon Power U.S. Military Bases—And Not Even Jamming Could Stop It
redcalcium@lemmy.institute 11 months ago
the end user converts that laser energy back into electricity using narrow-bandgap-tuned monochromatic photovoltaics
Is this specialized photovoltaic panels already exist or need to be invented first?
Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Well, photovoltaic panels are already only good at converting a specific range of wavelengths of light into energy. If you want to build more efficient panels, you often need to layer them, with different layers able to use different ranges of the spectrum.
Lasers (and LEDs for that matter) only produce a single wavelength of light, so there is some potential for using it to transmit energy. You just need to tune your laser and your panel to be on the same wavelength. So there’s some tuning that needs to happen, but it’s basically traditional photovoltaics we’re talking about.
Although even then, I’m not sure what the theoretical maximum efficiency of these panels would be, there would probably still be a lot of energy loss. AND ALSO, I have some serious concerns with giving the military giant space based lasers strong enough to power a military base, that’s generally called a death ray.
astropenguin5@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Good, cuz they’ve had them for years on submarines and maybe some boats too