Solar energy: US start-up wants to sell sunlight at night | Life & Knowledge


Very bright!

The Californian start-up Reflect Orbital wants to sell sunlight at night via app from October 2025. The start-up wants to send satellites with huge mirrors into the All which are then intended to reflect sunlight onto specific locations on Earth.

So far, the company has only tested the technology with a hot air balloon. The mirror prototype was attached to a balloon and is said to have reflected the light onto a mobile solar farm.

Idea comes from the 90s

The founders Ben Nowack and Tristan Semmelhack want to solve a previously unsolved problem with their sunlight start-up: To this day, they are looking for a solution to ensure the continuous supply of Solar energy around the clock.

Still a long way from satellites in space: The start-up sent the first reflection mirror into the air in a hot air balloon

Still a long way from satellites in space: The start-up sent the first reflection mirror into the air in a hot air balloon

Photo: Reflect Orbital

As early as the 1990s, Russia experimented with reflecting sunlight onto the Earth at night as part of the Znamya project. The project failed due to various technical problems.

“Reflect Orbital” founder Ben Nowack is much more optimistic. In a video he published on X (formerly Twitter), he demonstrated how sunlight will be bookable via an app in the future.

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Exciting: The light reflection is to be bookable for four minutes at a selected location and illuminate an area of ​​around five kilometers in diameter. However, founder Nowack later told X that this was only a demonstration so far and that a lot of work was still needed before it could be used.

Many questions remain unanswered

In the long term, the company wants to focus on two core areas: “Lightning” (providing sunlight at night) and “Energy” (heating the sun at night on Solar farms reflect).

This is how the start-up founders imagine their mirror satellites in the future, so far it is only a photomontage

This is how the start-up founders imagine their mirror satellites in the future, so far it is only a photomontage

Photo: Reflect Orbital

As innovative as the idea of ​​the start-up founders may seem, it also raises many questions: What effect do the reflections have on light pollution, what effect does the manipulated day-night rhythm have on plants, Animals and people? How much energy can actually be obtained from the reflected sun rays? The company has not yet provided any information on this.

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