Out of This World

Video by Leonard Pieton

Researchers transmit energy with laser in ‘historic’ power-beaming demonstration

U.S. Naval Research Laboratory

May 23, 2019 | 3:11

During a three-day-long tech demonstration at the David Taylor Model Basin at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Bethesda, Maryland, attendees gathered to see a long-range, free-space power beaming system. Attendees this day, May 23, could see the system itself—the two 13-foot-high towers, one a 2-kilowatt laser transmitter, the other a receiver of specially designed photovoltaics. But the laser that was beaming 400 watts of power across 325 meters, from the transmitter to the receiver, was invisible to the naked eye.