Beaming Solar Energy to Earth from Space

Many of us have seen the illustration here, where a solar PV array is put into a geosynchronous orbit, and sends microwave energy to a collector on earth.

There is nothing theoretically impossible about the idea, and one good thing about it is that it increases the capacity factor (the ratio of actual electrical energy a power plant produces over a period to the energy it could have produced if it operated at its maximum continuous power output during that same period) from about 0.2 to 1.0, because the sun never “sets.”

The problem is the enormous cost of building, launching, and maintaining the entire apparatus. The price of electricity under such a scenario would cost thousands of times what it is today.

Trust me, Japan is not even considering this concept.