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A comment on Harvesting solar power in space and sending it back to Earth. Parent comment

Re:Harvesting solar power in space and sending it back to Earth by polemic on Thursday August 29, 2013 @03:54AM (#6294758)
Seems to me that a significant advantage of 'space solar' is that you can ditch a significant amount of ground based distribution infrastructure. Transformers are pretty efficient but lose about 2% per step up/down[1], power lines are another 1-4%/100 miles[2], then you have losses related to storage since you can't turn solar on/off at will like you can with hydro or fired plants.

If a single solar sattelite [multiple for redundancy, in reality] can replace a large proportion continent's energy infrastructure, it starts to sound a lot more attractive.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformer#Energy_losses

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Los...

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Re:Harvesting solar power in space and sending it back to Earth by beambot on Thursday August 29, 2013 @04:02AM (#6294775)
You'd still have to distribute the power from ground-based receiving stations via the grid. No free lunch.
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Re:Harvesting solar power in space and sending it back to Earth by chad_oliver on Thursday August 29, 2013 @04:18AM (#6294816)
Yes, but I believe his point was that you could have multiple smaller stations close to where the power is needed. If it isn't safe to have the receivers near cities, then I don't think there's much chance that any receiver (anywhere) will get past the regulatory hurdles.
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Re:Harvesting solar power in space and sending it back to Earth by schiffern on Thursday August 29, 2013 @05:55PM (#6298903)
>a single solar sattelite [multiple for redundancy, in reality] can replace a large proportion continent's energy infrastructure

Woah there. Exactly how much power would each of these hypothetical satellites provide?

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