While it sounds nifty, if it works we will still be depending on big companies to sell this power to us.
I prefer independence.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080912/sc_...3P8FAzaSyoPLBIF

Your thoughts?

“Each of the nine solar panels used was built to transmit about 20 watts of power, but the transmission was scaled back to two watts per panel in order to obtain U.S. Federal Aviation Administration approval for the test.”
=====================

There were several proposals back in the late 1960’s to build Solar Power Satellites (SPS) to harvest the Sun’s energy and beam it to Earth-based receiving stations.
And in the early 1970’s a U.S .Patent was given to a guy who developed a means of transmitting power over long distances.

“The SPS concept was first described in November 1968 [2]. At first it was regarded as impractical due to the lack of a workable method of sending power collected down to the Earth's surface. This changed in 1973 when Peter Glaser was granted U.S. patent number 3,781,647 for his method of transmitting power over long distances (eg, from an SPS to the Earth's surface) using microwaves from a very large (up to one square kilometer) antenna on the satellite to a much larger one on the ground, which came to be known as a rectenna.[3]” More @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_satellite#History

The SPS program was pretty much shelved due to the high costs of achieving the goal and the rush to build nuclear fission power plants.
I’m not sure why this tech is now being touted as revolutionary or ground-breaking though…

Believe it or no, there were environmental concerns back then about sending vasts amounts of coherent micro-waved beamed electricity through the atmosphere from space, like how )a. It would affect the migratory patterns of Our Worlds Feathered Friends and )b. The concern of aircraft flying through the path of these beams, to name a couple of concerns.

The cost of the R&D, the hardware, the boost to orbit, the maintenance (Space and Earth based), the ground support, the admin support, the localized infrastructure needed to mete out this electricity to the public… Annnd more unknown expenses mandates this energy will not come free, let alone cheap.

And what is the environmental impact going to be?

Intriguing concept but I am putting my eggs in the ol’ Fusion Basket. I think fusion power generators will be the next generation electrical power source for Earth’s demands… ~rore

This post has been edited by rorechof: Sep 13 2008, 06:32 PM

Fusion is certainly better than fission.
Here is a link for some updated news on fusion and similar projects.

http://fire.pppl.gov/#NewsSection