You could also beam power from L1 to geosynchronous orbit and then to a single ground station. It really depends on how efficiently you can beam power, but hit

You could also beam power from L1 to geosynchronous orbit and then to a single ground station. It really depends on how efficiently you can beam power, but hitting Type 1 on the Kardashev scale hits limitations based on radiative cooling into space vs incoming energy. However, it makes sense to have hundreds of ground stations simply to minimize transmission losses on the ground. And presumably utilizing ground stations 24/7 is vastly less critical than maximizing the return on space based infrastructure.