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The next grid isn’t on Earth

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Our latest episode leaves the grid behind—literally—to head into orbit.

As the number of satellites and spacecraft in space grows, one fundamental limitation persists: power. These systems are smaller, smarter, and more capable than ever—but they’re energy-starved. That’s where today’s guest, Andrew Rush, steps in.

Andrew is the Co-Founder and CEO of Star Catcher, a cutting-edge startup developing the first power grid for space, in space. Instead of sending energy from orbit to Earth like traditional space-based solar concepts, Star Catcher’s revolutionary tech beams energy between spacecraft, enabling new capabilities and unlocking a new era of in-space infrastructure.

Whether you're an energy engineer, a space-tech nerd, or a grid operator wondering what lessons in orbit can teach us about Earth’s energy transition, this conversation offers a fascinating peek into the future of power.

Prefer to Read vs. Listening? Scroll Down to Read Transcript

Want to watch the conversation? Video of Power Perspectives are now being posted to YouTube

Thanks to the sponsor of this episode of the Power Perspectives: West Monroe

 

Key Links:

Andrew Rush on Energy Central: https://energycentral.com/member/profile/andrew-rush 

Ask a Question to Our Future Guests: Do you have a burning question for the utility executives and energy industry thought leaders that we feature each week on Power Perspectives? Leave us a message here for your chance to be featured in an upcoming episode: www.speakpipe.com/EnergyCentralPodcast 

 

TRANSCRIPT

Jason Price:

Welcome to another episode of the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast, where we speak to the change makers driving innovation across the energy sector. Today, we're taking our conversation above and beyond. Literally because while Earth based grids are undergoing transformation, an entirely new kind of infrastructure challenge is emerging overhead. How do we power? And a growing number of satellites and spacecraft. Operating in orbit, satellites today are shrinking in size but expanding in functionality, and their missions are increasingly constrained by a simple truth. Don't have enough power to do it all, and that's where today's guest comes in. Joining us is Andrew Rush, co-founder and CEO of Starcatcher, a startup building first true. Power grid in space. Andrew and his team are on a mission to solve the energy bottleneck that's holding back the next wave of innovation in orbit. Matt help us understand from the energy centric community the discussions have been like in space related questions. From your observation.

 

Matt Chester:

Yeah, it's it's a really interesting moment to be having this discussion because you know, while the energy Central community it's it's very much grounded literally in utilities transmission, earthbound infrastructure. We are starting to see space technology pop up more frequently in related conversations. So opportunity is like space. Based climate modeling satellite supported GIS tools and grid resilience strategies, or even emerging ideas like beaming energy from space to the ground. These are all topics that our Members are recognizing that. You know what's happening in orbit? It's increasingly relevant to what's happening down on Earth and on the grid, so maybe a few years ago, those conversations when they came up, they felt a little bit more like science fiction. But I think that curiosity is blossoming before our eyes into some real strategies, some real discussions about how thinking bigger about space can help our traditional and modern terrestrial energy. Challenges. So you know that's all to say. Space isn't necessarily a daily topic on energycentral.com's platform quite yet, but. The interest is growing and I think today's episode of the podcast will we'll feed into that and be maybe be a a Kickstarter to some more interest.

 

Jason Price:

I would agree. All right. Well, thank you, Matt. Thank you for that. And before we dive in a big thank you to Wes tomorrow, our sponsor of today's episode. Now let's get started. Andrew Rush, welcome to power perspectives. So let's kick things off with the founding story, right, you you've you've had a fascinating journey to where you are today at starcatcher. So walk us through the origin story of the company. How this vision of space based power grid came to?

 

Andrew Rush:

Life myself and one of my 2 Co powders at starcatcher, Mike Snyder have been working together for about 10 years and this is actually our third space company that we've built or scale the first company that we built was called made in space, which is a very kind of sci-fi to science reality. Company we were the first folks to manufacture functional objects off the face of the planet. With 3D printing. We built that company up and sold it in 2020. And then we wanted to become the. Founding president and Chief Technology Officer, respectively of red wire space, which is a diversified subsystems and components manufacturer for the space sector. So we've been involved in a lot of different space missions and in those space missions we always ran into swap constraints, you know, size, weight and power. Now over the last. 5 or 10 years, the aperture around size and weight has really opened up because of the advent of reusable rockets and not lowering the cost of operations. Lowering the cost to get to space. But we're still doing power in the same way we've always done it. We go out in space, we go on these little camping trips, we take our shower panels with us. They're all finite size and you're really trying to size that to, you know, the the balance between cost and mass available and volume available to operate in space, which is OK in the past. But now we have all of these ambitions, all these needs. For our spacecraft that we want to do direct to cell connectivity, we want to do edge computing in space. We want to do high power remote sensing. All of these things require a lot more power than traditionally has been available on space. That, coupled with kind of looking at how we do things on the ground, you know we have you know we have fundamental infrastructure everywhere, you know roads, power and comms and in space, our roads are rockets, our Coms or big dishes that talk to satellites. But there hasn't really been an orbital energy grid to provide that same kind of infrastructure. Or satellites and enable them to. Operate in this much the same way we operate things on the ground from a power perspective, and so that's why star Country was founded to build the world's first orbital energy.

 

Jason Price:

Grid. That's great. So I mean, starcatcher is a technology play, so let's let's dig into the technology. You know, there's been a lot of discussion around space. Based solar power for Earth. You know, beaming down from orbit. But your team has taken a different path, focusing on beaming power within space. So break that down for us. How this starcatcher solution work.

 

Andrew Rush:

Yeah, that was a great question. So we we have a couple of fundamental principles for how we're building our orbital energy grid in order to maximize the the use to spacecraft that are already flying and spacecraft are under development today. And so first of all, we're focused on space to space power beaming because we fundamentally want to take kind of a crawl, walk, run approach. To to developing new technologies and so. You know, I've been reading science fiction since, you know, since I could read and the, the, the, the promise and potential of being in power for the space down to the ground is awesome, but we don't really think it's quite there yet from a technological and regulatory perspective, but beaming energy to other satellites to give them more power, power concentrations of power. The empowered eclipse we think now is the time, and So what we do, what we are doing is building in a a constellation of silence that will orbit at kind of the top of low Earth orbit, which is where most spacecraft are in space today. That will collect energy from the sun condition that energy and transmit on to our client satellites that we track with onboard optical tracking systems. And we send that energy not to a customer receiver, which would require in a money in mass investment by our clients and constrain who we could send energy. To, but we send energy in the kind of 400 to 1100 nanometer regime, which is basically visible in the urine for. Light to our clients existing solar arrays so that we can give them that additional power. This is really important because it avoids the chicken and the egg problem of them needing some needing an interface and you get needing a customer receiver to work with us and the other really awesome thing about this that many of your listeners may already know is that. A solar panel is a bunch of photovoltaics and photovoltaics. If you send them more flux, if you send them a higher intensity of light, they generate A roughly linear and a roughly linear fashion addition. More power. So in space we get 1300 watts per square meter of energy from the sun and we generate maybe 400 watts per square meter with our solar arrays, if we, you know increase that by five times, we actually can generate not 400 But 2000 watts per square meter and really increase the amount of power available to that spacecraft. And this is the way that we can take a small spacecraft with a really high power. Awesome. Load that maybe with just the one naked sun is getting, you know, 10% uptime. It's gotta charge batteries and then discharge. And then do that cycle over and over again. We can take that spacecraft from 10% time to 50% to 100% on time, dramatically increasing its use, its its usability and and the ROI. That the satellite operator can.

 

Jason Price:

Get this transfer of the technology, which I think is really key here is is very interesting, but it's also, you know listeners will think it sounds science fiction. So talk us about the progress. Where does the project stand today? Do you have a proof of concept? What does the timeline towards implementation look like?

 

Andrew Rush:

So we announced the company a, a little less than a year ago in July of 2024 that we that we announced the company, our vision where and the progress we've made to date as well as that we'd raised about 12 and a half million dollar seed round from some really well known New York and Silicon Valley. Based venture capital firms now at the time we were about 3 folks working in this small warehouse and and and had a few letters of intent from from customers Fast forward to today we have over 30 letters of intent from a wide variety of customers. So it's literally billions of dollars of potential contract. Value we have about 30 members of the team now with three paying customers spending national security, civil space and commercial space. And we've done a series of really awesome technology demonstrations. In our laboratory, we've demonstrated the ability to acquire satellites that are orbiting in space and then you know, so we can lock on them and beam beam power using the technology we have one day and then we've also taken our proprietary power beaming technology to the Jacksonville Jaguars football stadium here in Jacksonville, FL where we're. And set that up and beam power over the length of the football field there, which is a really cool. Uh, you know, you know, local thing that we did and it was fully successful functionally work how we expected it to. And so the next steps going forward is taking that test from a football field length to a multi multi kilometer distance as here on the ground. And then and next year doing that demonstration in space and then following that up. With larger spacecraft, not just demonstration demonstration spacecraft, but but commercially operational spacecraft thereafter to start doing commercial power beaming services on orbit.

 

Jason Price:

OK, I want to make sure I understood this test that you did so in the Jacksonville football stadium at one end of the end zone, you have your technology on the other end, you have say the receiver of the power and you were able to beam. The power transfer it without wires. From one end, 100 yards to the other end. The transfer was successful. Did it capture the full power from its source to its its endpoint.

 

Andrew Rush:

Yeah, that's that's exactly right. So we set up our power viewing prototype on one end of the field actually behind the end zone and then we set up on the other end. Just normal off the shelf solar solar arrays, some that were provided by some satellite manufacturing partners that we have, as well as some we just bought off the shelf. We've been powered to the solar array. It was 105 meter distance, about 100 Watt transfer.

 

Jason Price:

That's fantastic. And that was the community engagement that you ran to sort of demonstrate or was there another community engagement program that you had delivered?

 

Andrew Rush:

We thought it would be kind of cool to do it in the in the Jaguars stadium, so we reached out to them. We said, hey, we we're we're a local technology company and and we'd love to do this. They're like, this is really neat. So come on down. And so they're the mascot of the Jacksonville Jaguars, which actually came out, which was really neat. But we also reached out to a local. Poison glory. Club chapter and and had them come out and showed them, you know, hey, this is what we're doing and you know, you know, talk to them about space and and the and the promise of potential both to say both to educate them, you know a little bit more about the how awesome space is and the future and the things and the things that they could be involved in and also to let. Kids like that know, hey, this stuff is happening, not just, you know, not not Cape Canaveral. Not over in California. Whatever. It's happening here locally. You know which. Not everybody really realizes how how geographically diverse the space sector.

 

Jason Price:

Is OK, let me let me ask you a a question here on, you know, space travel and what's going on with companies like Blue Origin and SpaceX and the investments that the government is making in. And all this. So there's a lot and there's a trend in sort of this this height curve that's going on in the space. So I guess my question to you is why now are you taking advantage of this, this this curve or are you seeing like real? Well, thoughtful decisions and investments and strategies that are going to be here long term to sustain these these ongoing developments in space. So just talk to us about that because I'm sure there's people in the audience that question whether this is just hype right now and someone's writing it or is there genuine, you know, end game here that, that that we can. All benefit from.

 

Andrew Rush:

That's where we've gotten companies like SpaceX and Rocket Lab and Blue. Version coming into the market and dramatically reducing the cost of launch like from you know, 10s of thousands of dollars of kilogram to single digit thousands of dollars per kilogram to get things to space and that has really just open the aperture for us in the space sector to do more things in space and do those things profitably. It's also driven the shift. Of. Bringing most solids now into low Earth orbit rather than low Earth orbit, medium Earth orbit and even geosynchronous orbit way out. You know, 10s of thousands of kilometers away because of that. That really creates an opportunity for us to build an orbital energy grid in lower orbit because for the first time there are thousands of satellites going up. To do proliferated Leo telecommunications due to remote sensing to do edge computing that are all in a in a similar geographic place in lower orbit, that all ultimately could use more power to accomplish our mission. And so it's that Nexus for us of. You know a geographic concentration of customers with a common need that really Dr. Starcatcher makes this a now opportunity for building orbital.

 

Jason Price:

Energy. When I ask you, I mean this is a really powerful technology, especially if if it comes to fruition then its applications will be phenomenal and its implications will be monumental. Share with us. From an engineering standpoint, what are some of the big engineering hurdles that you still need to overcome to really pull this?

 

Andrew Rush:

Off so the space sector has a saying we're willing to fly anything as long as it's flown once before. So for us, getting to an operational prototype. And showing that in space we can collect, concentrate and transmit energy to a client. Spacecrafts, you know existing solar arrays and give them the energy they want when they need it is the fundamental engineering challenge for us we have. Literally dozens of customers that say, hey, if this existed today, we would use it. And here's why your use cases. Here's how this would transform our business. Here's how this would transform our mission. Here's how this could save. Commissions, but getting to orbital prototype is really the eye of the needle for.

 

Jason Price:

Us. I imagine my next question is pretty much along the lines. So you just answer. So what's next for Star catcher and what should be watching for in the next 12 months?

 

Andrew Rush:

We take a crawl, walk, run approach at star catcher at Starcatcher. We're not just going straight to building a, you know, 100 kilowatt, you know, system in space without doing intervening. So we've done, you know, our kind of mid scale demonstration at the Jacksonville Jaguars football stadium, our next major ground demonstration is actually going to be down at Cape Canaveral at the the runway, the space shuttle used to land on. It's like a 4 1/2 kilometer long runway. We're being powered down that runway, which is a really, you know it's a longer distance, much higher. Power. It's a really awesome, you know, technology proof point for us and following that up in, you know, 12 to 18 months time, we will do our first own orbit demonstration of power being.

 

Jason Price:

For us earthlings that are, you know, energy and utility professionals and engineers and energy utility leaders connect the dots for us. From this application, how do you see starcatchers? Technology applying here on our.

 

Andrew Rush:

So there's there's two fundamental ways that what we're doing at starcatcher really ties in to the terrestrial energy grid. 1 is that that, as you mentioned in in your earlier remarks, there's so many different ways that we rely on space. In our daily lives, right, you know, GPS is based on satellites that are flying in space. And that's what makes Google Maps and Waze and all these things work. And the imagery in those. There's also from space, space assets, from satellites, taking pictures of the Earth another way that's really interesting that we started exploring actually. Is the technology that we're developing and the demonstrations that we're doing, you know, going down to the Jacksonville Jaguars stadium and being powerful in football fields soon going down to Cape Canaveral and beaming multiple kilometer. That technology could actually be used to enable drones to operate more freely and stay aloft longer and and operate more freely. And so that's something we're exploring as well and actually looking for partners to to work on that commercialization with us.

 

Jason Price:

We really appreciate all this. It's really fascinating and certainly cutting edge and I and I have fully confident we're gonna get a lot of interest from this from this. The nature of this topic. But before we let you go and we're gonna give you the final word, we we do have something called the Lightning run which gives us an opportunity, Andrew, to learn a little bit more about you, the person rather than you the professional. So we're. Through a set of questions at you, we ask you to keep your response to one word or phrase or sentence. If you were going into space and can only take one snack item with you, what would it be?  If you could get one space related question or mysteries solved. What would that be?

 

Andrew Rush:

Probably how to practically build A Star Trek warp drive.

 

Jason Price:

Which your favorite science fiction movie

 

Andrew Rush:

Star Trek 4

 

Jason Price:

Who have been your role models throughout your career?

 

Andrew Rush:

My grandfather

 

Jason Price:

we've been collecting lightning round questions from past podcast guests, so this one comes from Marcus McCarthy of Siemens. How do you help those around you to be better every day? How do you help people to reach?

 

Andrew Rush:

I think the way that we do that at STARCATCHER is. Taking the grand vision we have and trying to break that down into digestible chunks that then we can go execute on together. So giving people the tools and the room to run in that kind of environment

 

Jason Price:

and now it's your turn. What lightning round question would you like to challenge a future guest? And of course it can be topical and related to energy or it can be. An off the wall question.

 

Andrew Rush:

I've seen a lot in the news about how AI and it is, is a huge power, neat and it's driving the US to turn on new power plants, build new power plants, et cetera, etc. And that's really seems to emerge in the last couple of years. I wonder what is next in that in that world?

 

Jason Price:

And the last question, this question we asked all our guests and that is what are you most motivated?

 

Andrew Rush:

By I am really personally and professionally motivated by enabling people to do more things in space. And enabling them to do new things.

 

Jason Price:

And that's great. Thank you and. So I mentioned you you get the final word. So to close out our episode, I would love for you to reflect on the multiple space tech endeavors you've been part of and shared and what's something you've learned about innovation in the sector that you think applies broadly across industries, particularly in the energy sector back here on Earth?

 

Andrew Rush:

So the space is a really fascinating. Better to work in because. Is we we as humans. Our our have had imaginations that have outstripped our capability in space for forever. Right. Isaac Asimov design Geo telecommunications satellite networks before we went to space before we had satellite and obviously Star Trek and you know had mobile phones. In the 60s, before we had the. Now and so one of the things that I've really taken to heart and used is this notion of, you know, having these grand visions and being inspired by what people have thought of and see through before us, but trying to take that and break that down into into digestible chunks of of product and service. That we can provide so that we can we can move the needle toward these grand visions that people have had for. For, you know, for a space herring species.

 

Jason Price:

That's great. Now I want to thank you for first of all, this is this is the first time we've had a show and we've had about over 200 now. We've had a show where we talked about space and energy and space. So thank you for taking the time to share this with us and and I and again, I know that this is going to be a hot topic for our community. I want to thank you now for you know really. Sharing us your insight and giving, giving us a bird bird's eye view of what star Starcatcher is doing and and the and the. The potential that could come of it. So we really want to thank you for joining us on the podcast today and sharing us your insights. Well, you can always reach Andrew through the energy central platform where we welcomed your questions and comments and I encourage everyone listening to do just that. I also want to give a shout out of thanks to the podcast sponsors that made today's episode possible. Thank you to West Monroe. West Monroe is a leading. Partner for the nations largest electric, gas and water utilities working together to drive grid modernization, clean energy and workforce transformation. Westernmost comprehensive services are designed to support utilities and advancing their digital transformation, building resilient operations, securing federal funding and providing regulatory advisory support with a multidisciplinary team of experts, West Monroe offers a holistic approach that addresses the challenges of the grid today and provides innovative solutions for a sustainable future. Once again, I'm your host, Jason Price. Plug in and stay fully charged with the discussion by hopping into the community at energycentral.com and we'll see you next time at the energy central Power Perspectives podcast.

 

About Energy Central Podcasts

Power Perspectives features conversations with thought leaders in the utility sector. At least twice monthly, we connect with an Energy Central Power Industry Network community member to discuss compelling topics that impact professionals who work in the power industry. Some podcasts may be a continuation of thought-provoking posts or discussions started in the community or with an industry leader that is interested in sharing their expertise and doing a deeper dive into hot topics or issues relevant to the industry.

Power Perspectives is the premiere podcast series from Energy Central, a Power Industry Network of Communities built specifically for professionals in the electric power industry and a place where professionals can share, learn, and connect in a collaborative environment. Supported by leading industry organizations, our mission is to help global power industry professionals work better. Since 1995, we’ve been a trusted news and information source for professionals working in the power industry, and today our managed communities are a place for lively discussions, debates, and analysis to take place. If you’re not yet a member, visit www.EnergyCentral.com to register for free and join over 200,000 of your peers working in the power industry.

Power Perspectives is hosted by Jason Price, Community Ambassador of Energy Central. Jason is a Business Development Executive at West Monroe, working in the East Coast Energy and Utilities Group. Jason is joined in the podcast booth by the producer of the podcast, Matt Chester, who is also the Community Manager of Energy Central and energy analyst/independent consultant in energy policy, markets, and technology.  

If you want to be a guest on a future episode of Power Perspectives, let us know! We’ll be pulling guests from our community members who submit engaging content that gets our community talking, and perhaps that next guest will be you! Likewise, if you see an article submitted by a fellow Energy Central community member that you’d like to see broken down in more detail in a conversation, feel free to send us a note to nominate them.  For more information, contact us at [email protected]. Podcast interviews are free for Expert Members and professionals who work for a utility.  We have package offers available for solution providers and vendors. 

Happy listening, and stay tuned for our next episode! Like what you hear, have a suggestion for future episodes, or a question for our guest? Leave a note in the comments below.

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