Can they compete with terrestrial solar power plants?
One of the more unusual concepts for harvesting renewable energy is the positioning of solar power stations in space that emit their collected energy to earth-based receiving antennas. It is far less science fiction than it may at first seem. Europe has been investigating Solar Power Satellites (SPS) since 1979. Significant technical and conceptual advances have been made since the initial efforts. Progress has been made in decreasing the total cost, the cost-to-first-power, and assembling the required infrastructure for SPS. Europe recently bundled their efforts in this domain into the European Network on Space Solar Power under the leadership of the European Space Agency (ESA). But over the same period, considerable progress has also been made in terrestrial solar power technology. This raises the question, ‘Why would Europe put power plants in space when there is so much sun in the Mediterranean countries and in the North African desert?’ In his paper Solar Power Satellites – Europe
