Opportunities in Power Beaming for Micro Renewable Energy

Developing advanced concepts that go well beyond today’s practices, is a useful way for students to learn about innovation across discipline barriers. In this paper, the experience of aerospace engineering students is described as they develop a concept that cuts across aerospace technology, several areas of electrical and civil engineering and socio-economic issues. The subject is how to develop a power transmission and distribution architecture based on wireless beaming complementing and reaching beyond the wired power grid. The processes of defining requirements and selecting parameters in this wide-open area, are set out. The education here is not through course lectures but through cross-disciplinary learning on projects. Student experience over the years is reviewed, starting from initial concept exploration to present refinement. It is argued that millimeter wave beaming is essential, and that viable end-to-end efficiency can be achieved, to succeed in the marketplace. Student participants in this concept development over the years, have been at levels ranging from freshmen to PhD students. Their ways of exploration, knowledge extraction, validation and innovation are discussed in the paper.