Space-Based Solar Power (SBSP)

If you are a fanatic about Solar Power, and Space, this should spark your imagination for many sleepless nights

Space-Based Solar Power is the new concept of harnessing solar energy in geostationary orbit (GEO), 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and then wirelessly beaming (or zapping) it down to the Earth's surface for use in the electrical grid.
The shining value proposition of a space-based energy is that it skips the limitations of terrestrial solar power: pesty things like nights, rain clouds, dust or sand clouds, and volcanic plumes during the hard years of global cooling (it will come again).
A solar array above us can receive up to eight to eleven times more intense, uninterrupted solar energy than an identical panel on Earth.

How the Is this Possible, I hear you say

Let’s simplify a SBSP system into three main components:
1. Solar Power Generation: A massive, modular, kilometers wide array of solar panels to convert sunlight into electricity.
2. Wireless Transmission: The electricity is bundled into microwaves or laser beams and precisely transmitted to a specific point on Earth. Remember the vision of the Deathstar destroying a planet, but just frying stray birds and boiling muddy puddles. It is not that dangerous.
3. The Receiver: A fixed ground-based receiving antenna converts the microwave or laser energy into electricity to be fed directly into the electrical power grid. Green Politicians, Space Fans, and Grid Operators can rejoice.

Yes, the Many Challenges…

Here cometh the nay sayers… The physics and basic technology (tried and trusted wireless power transmission, solar panels, and large-scale structures) are workable, the big Ifs are not really surprising, namely engineering and economic.
The Potential is that SBSP provides clean, continuous, baseload power that complements intermittent terrestrial renewables (like wind and solar) and ticks the ESG box as a potentially limitless source of carbon-free energy, capable of delivering power to any location on the globe visible from the orbiting array. So far so good…
The challenges are the initial cost of manufacturing and launching such an immense mass of the solar arrays into orbit (which is currently economically hard to convince most welfare-dependent democracies), but a rapidly falling launch costs (bring out the cheer leaders for S-T-A-R-S-H-I-P Starship!) sheds a refreshing light on the concept. Other challenges are the actual efficiency of long-distance power transmission (through space and atmospsheres) and the public perception (NIMBY environmentalist frustrations galore) regarding the safety of the power beam.
Fear Not, SBSP Fans: Major space agencies (like NASA and ESA) and private ventures are funding and research small-scale demonstrators.

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