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Even in your example there are scenarios it could be worthwhile. What if it’s gas produced in-country and its used as a military fill station? Particularly if i

Even in your example there are scenarios it could be worthwhile. What if it’s gas produced in-country and its used as a military fill station? Particularly if it’s always available despite foreign political events. For personal usage maybe it’ll never be worth it, but perhaps it’s worthwhile for other use cases. Solar + batteries might not work if you can’t buy/procur enough batteries, especially for Arctic regions say where days are short. Or perhaps it’ll become possible to use for recharging electric airplanes in-flight. In that case the ability to “beam” worldwide might offset the cost of ground based grid of towers or ocean barges, etc. To be clear, I think it’s very unlikely, just not infeasible. Particularly if antennae tech keeps improving.

Dylan16807 5y ago
> What if it’s gas produced in-country and its used as a military fill station? Particularly if it’s always available despite foreign political events. Except local solar requires fewer resources of every kind than satellite solar. You're more likely in every way to get cut off from the space version. > Or perhaps it’ll become possible to use for recharging electric airplanes in-flight. In that case the ability to “beam” worldwide might offset the cost of ground based grid of towers or ocean barges, etc. That would be cool. But it's a very different problem from grid power. I don't think it counts as a reason to beam dedicated space power to ground stations.