This far-out idea could enable solar panels to work at night

In a laboratory amid Northern Virgina’s sprawling data centers, a group of scientists is looking very far outside the box for a solution to overwhelmed power grids. They want to harness the sun’s rays and shoot a kilometer-wide laser – they prefer the term “power beam” – down from satellites in space to solar panels on Earth. The idea is to overcome solar power’s biggest weakness: that it stops working when there is no sunlight. If all goes according to plan – a big if, as this is a vision innovators and investors have been chasing for decades – those…