KEYNOTE: POWER: Persistent Optical Wireless Energy Relay, and DARPA’s Pathway to Energy Web Dominance

Dominating the energy web to more rapidly and reliably move energy through the battlespace and deliver military effects is the essence of warfare. DARPA perceives an opportunity to disrupt distribution by leveraging power beaming for near-instantaneous energy transport in a resilient, multi-path network. POWER (Persistent Optical Wireless Energy Relay) is a meaningful step toward building a new, more resilient energy distribution network. By leveraging optical power beaming at high altitude for energy delivery over significant distances, DARPA will build the high throughput backbone for the wireless energy web. This will enable robust connections between secure energy sources and places of high need. POWER is the next critical step to enable energy web dominance by developing effective optical energy relays capable of creating the wireless multipath supply lines for distributed systems at meaningful ranges. Ongoing and future planned work will explore architectures that combine the benefits of various power beaming modalities within a coherent energy web framework. Ultimately DARPA envisions a future where energy can be seamlessly and autonomously flowed through this network flexibly connecting abundant sources to energy starved consumers.